New York’s new espionage-themed destination is a tourist attraction gone undercover as a museum.
Spyscape invites us to “Question Everything.” The museum, which opened earlier this spring, features design by architect David Adjaye and promises a highly immersive, interactive journey through the world of spycraft. Positioned (and priced) somewhere between a museum and a theme park, its high-end thrills seemed worthy of investigation….
Located in midtown Manhattan, in a glassy corner of a newly built office tower, Spyscape’s lobby is spacious and modern, acclimating visitors to the somber grays and fritted transparencies that follow – not unlike a contemporary Bond villain’s lair. On checking in, I was given an RFID wristband and directed to begin my experience at an adjacent kiosk. A quick questionnaire evaluated my personality, explaining that throughout my experience I would face a variety of challenges to help identify the spy role that best suited me. A large video wall cycled through the available choices; I knew immediately that I was destined to be a cryptologist.
Nearby, an enormous elevator descended slowly behind glass, providing entry into the galleries. Once inside with the doors closed, the walls came to life via ceiling-mounted projectors. An introductory video addressed the cybersurveillance risks posed by social media and mobile devices. Though the animations used familiar tropes for depicting abstract technology, there were some nice visceral, immersive moments that worked well with the room’s slow vertical motion.
The elevator exits into an enormous gift shop with a small cafe counter. There’s a lot of space everywhere, a decadent amount for this part of the city.
I headed into the first gallery, devoted to Encryption. Near the entrance sits an original WWII Enigma machine, one of a handful of historic artifacts on view; a working facsimile nearby lets visitors see the encryption wheels spin. Graphics and media in the gallery focus on the codebreakers of Bletchley Park, accompanied by costumes and props from the film The Imitation Game. Animated, hand-sketched portraits provide an interesting touch, and projected animations explain the Enigma’s engineering and history.
Near the end of the gallery, a series of touchtables invite visitors to try their hands at codebreaking. While it’s not a great use of the tabletop format, the experience was more engaging than I’d expected, as it asked me to interact by drawing letters rather than using a touch keyboard.
As I left this gallery I realized that I’d had no real introduction – conceptual, historical, or otherwise – to the world of espionage. The galleries assume a blanket familiarity with the topic and avoid asking, or answering, the question of “why.”
The exhibition continues with a gallery themed to Deception, which takes a similar, focused approach, telling the story of Robert Hanssen, a Cold War CIA agent who secretly spied for the KGB. The tactic worked for me, largely because it’s a good story, presented suspensefully through media, graphics, props from the film Breach, and finally, an animated Comic Book showing how Hanssen was caught. Why a comic book? I’m not sure, but it was very well done, if a little slow-paced.
As with the previous gallery, this theme incorporates a central interactive challenge. Small interrogation rooms present video of a suspect’s interviews; we are asked to determine whether she is lying or not. While the activity is well-structured and the media is well-produced, it felt a bit false to me, because the suspect is clearly an actress and her ‘tells’ are ungenuine.
Next comes a cylindrical gallery devoted to Surveillance, covering topics from Edward Snowden to journalistic espionage. Above our heads, a video collage of security footage fills the walls. Stations in the middle of the room invite us to don headsets and take our third training challenge. Here, a narrator poses questions about the camera feeds and asks for our verbal responses, testing our ability to process visual information quickly. This experience was surprisingly engaging, and ultimately stress-inducing, as the questions became increasingly tricky as they went along.
A gallery on Hacking features a visual centerpiece of Guy Fawkes masks, surrounded by stories of both black- and white-hat hacking groups. A Special Ops gallery tells the story of WWII Allied spy Virginia Hall alongside cases of historic spy gadgets. The last of the core interactive activities challenges users to navigate a narrow hallway while avoiding criss-crossing laser beams. This was fun and, despite the lack of consequences, a little bit nerve-wracking.
Finally, an Intelligence gallery presents stories about espionage during the Cuban Missile Crisis. While this gallery features a great animated video inspired by mid-century illustration, the lack of interaction and the abundance of wall texts made it all seem a little bit tedious.
The last room of the exhibition offers a debriefing that reveals our final spy assessments. After tapping my RFID badge at a large touchscreen station, I was presented with my core personality traits: independent, mathematical, and perfectionist; I was classified as a cryptologist, after all.
Back to that question of “why?” Is it possible to build a spy museum in 2018 without bringing up politics? Yes, apparently; Spyscape talks about espionage without talking about ethics, consequences, or tyranny, and as such, it feels incomplete. I imagine the omission is deliberate, an attempt to engage a wide audience without challenging any beliefs.
So whose point of view is being presented here? And why create a spy museum in the first place? The institution’s website didn’t answer any of these questions – and didn’t even credit Adjaye’s contributions. The exhibition’s authorship was, ultimately, anonymous. Some web research revealed that the venue originated with a British venture capital group, Archimedia, whose other projects include resort hotels. Yes, it appeared, Spyscape was built for tourists.
That said, they will need to sell a lot of $39 tickets to recoup the $50 million incurred in development costs. I visited on a weekday in the early afternoon, and the place felt empty. There were a handful of German tourists around, and plenty of staffers, but I often found myself alone in the galleries. For all its sleek, urban architecture, Skyscape feels disconnected from New York – the stories it presents are focused in Washington and Europe, and one could imagine the exhibition being replicated verbatim in any English-speaking city.
I had a good time at Spyscape, and I admired the craftsmanship and originality of its media, interactive, and experience design. It will entertain tourists, but it’s a tough sell for New York audiences, who might expect a bit more context, perspective, and transparency as they “Question Everything.”