Surprisingly psychedelic. In a good way.
Behind Memorial Hall's freshly scrubbed granite facade and colossal triple-arched entry pavilion there now lies a hallucinogenic world awash in acid green and electric blue, where puffy white clouds joust with Corinthian columns, a cardboard Comcast Tower springs from a subterranean cavern, and a mad Cheshire cat presides over a spiraling rabbit hole, tricked up with funhouse mirrors and trapdoors.
This is Alice-in-Wonderland territory. Big things turn small, small things swell into giants. The exhibits seem to go on without end, with repeated flashbacks to Philadelphia's lost past - Wanamakers, the Pennsylvania Railroad, Lit Bros., Captain Noah. Even adults may be seized with a desire to race through the halls, howling.
The Please Touch's extreme colors and dizzying array of exhibits - or experiences, as museum officials call them - are sure to put some people off. We're used to our neoclassical buildings exuding the serenity of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, whose collection Memorial Hall once housed.
But here, as visitors pass through the arches into the Great Hall, they are immersed in an 80-foot-high parfait of apricot, terra-cotta, black and cream, laced with gold leaf and rosy granite. And those are meant to be the historically correct colors.
When the Please Touch agreed to make Memorial Hall its home, it struck a deal with the city: It promised to restore the central hall of the run-down building to its original grandeur so long as it could have its way with the side wings and the basement, which had been outfitted in the 1950s with a basketball court and swimming pool. Most of the surfaces were painted white over the years, and that is how many Philadelphians think of them.
