About a half hour into our visit to ANN HAMILTON: the event of a thread, the brand-new interactive installation at the Park Avenue Armory, my 13-year-old son observed, "I feel like I'm trapped in modern art." My five-year-old daughter had a much less analytical reaction: "Swings!"

Indeed, there are a lot of swings in the Armory's cavernous main hall—plus hanging fabrics, fluttering pigeons and other offbeat sights. According to Hamilton, the massive multimedia piece is "made of many crossings of the near at hand and the far away." But my kids weren't concerned with its meaning; they just knew it was fun to run around and explore.

read more