Lifestyle
6 things to know about L.A.'s new Balloon Museum, a place to dive into psychedelic art
You won’t find any clowns at the L.A. leg of the traveling Balloon Museum, but there are plenty of other carnival-inspired sights and sounds to be experienced: massive inflated tents, queue lines marked by bright primary colors and concessions fit for the midway.
The award-winning contemporary art museum unveiled its “Let’s Fly” show last week for a limited run at the Arts District’s Ace Mission Studios, which previously housed the fantastical amusement park Luna Luna.
Founded in Rome in 2020, the museum has welcomed more than 4.4 million visitors at its runs in cities across the globe, including Paris, Milan, Madrid, London, New York, Atlanta and Miami, among others. Each iteration is informed by the culture of the city hosting it, with the sole central medium of air.
A cross between the sensory explosion of Meow Wolf and the labyrinthine nature of an IKEA store, the experience features installations from 21 artists with avant-garde interpretations of inflatable and balloon art. On view through March 16, the exhibition is highly immersive and highly Instagrammable. Here are six things to know before you visit.
1. The experience begins even before you enter the building
The Sixth Street Viaduct stands in the background of the outdoor exhibit “D.R.E.A.M.S.” by artist Camila Falsini.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The museum opens with a walk through the gardens — more specifically, Camila Falsini’s “D.R.E.A.M.S.,” a series of oversized inflatable shapes, symbols and igloos meant to evoke a dreamlike city inspired by Pop art and the Memphis Group.
The works, created specially for the L.A. “Let’s Fly” exhibition, are striped, spotted, shaped like doughnuts and light up in the night sky like condensed, dirigible versions of Ugo Rondinone’s “Seven Magic Mountains” sculpture.
Just inside, Max Streicher’s “Quadriga” stages massive billowing horses that call to mind wingless Pegasi the way they seem to gallop through the air. And the installations continue all the way through the gift shop, which is situated between a series of photo backdrops and a food court offering concessions like popcorn and cotton candy.
2. The strongest common thread between the works is not balloons but air
Maristella Burchietti is immersed in the exhibit “AI Data Portal of Los Angeles” by the Ouchhh collective.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
One might not immediately make the connection between data and air, but Ouchhh collective’s “AI Data Portal of Los Angeles,” an immersive tunnel of LED screens broadcasting an abstract amalgamation of Excel spreadsheets, documents, graphs and other digital ephemera, reimagines the city’s cloud data as thousands of tiny colored beads. The room, which has a dizzying effect, is reminiscent of Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirror Rooms” at the Broad but looks more like something out of Ant-Man’s quantum universe.
Another exhibit, the museum’s newest work, “Mariposa” by Oakland-based LED artist Christopher Schardt, features a massive flapping butterfly powered by a swinging bench and illuminated by more than 39,000 full-color LEDs. The most balloon-like, airy element of this room is the plush bean bags, on which guests are encouraged to recline and relax.
3. You’ll want to relive your childhood by diving into the massive ball pit
The “Hyperstellar” exhibit, created by Hyperstudio, Quiet Ensemble and Roman Hill, is one of many interactive art spaces.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
There are many great and memorable exhibits in the museum, but perhaps the pièce de résistance is the massive Olympic pool-sized ball pit that hosts intermittent light shows in which additional balls and spotlights descend from the already bulbous ceiling. If Matthew McConaughey’s “Interstellar” astronaut stumbled upon a planet dominated by palm-sized black balls, it might look something like this.
In fact, “Hyperstellar,” from Hyperstudio with Quiet Ensemble and Roman Hill, is meant to evoke musings about the cosmos, with the surrounding walls wrapped with LED screens broadcasting 360-degree views of exploding water droplets and air bubbles.
4. If you’re light-sensitive, beware of The Ginjos
“The Ginjos” exhibit by Rub Kandy is one of the more intense spaces in the museum.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
While there are many rooms inside the museum that appeal to one’s senses of touch, sound and sight (including a dimly lit bubble room with wet, squishy floors), visitors at risk of seizures should avoid “The Ginjos,” an installation filled with strange inflatable creatures that are something like Minions on acid.
Even the museum’s description, which describes Rub Kandy’s creations have “huge eyes that see everything,” is mildly creepy. Add to it pulsing strobe lights and floppy, oversized, mouthless cyclopes and you have all the makings of a nightmare trip. Speaking of trips …
5. Consider visiting the museum a little buzzed
Another “Let’s Fly” exclusive, ENESS’ “Spiritus Sonata,” features hallucinogenic, elephant-balloon hybrids that are straight out of Winnie the Pooh’s psychedelic “Heffalumps and Woozles” scene. Imagine mastodon-like creatures whose noses are wind instruments that inflate the structures and emit sound.
While there were makeshift wine bars intermittently set up throughout the space during the media preview, it’s unclear whether the museum will provide provisions for the general public. But patrons who partake before arriving will definitely have a heightened experience in the trippy rooms.
6. Wear something Instagrammable — there’s a selfie opp by the exit!
Maristella Burchietti stands in one the museum’s selfie spots.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
No modern museum is complete without plenty of social media-ready photo opportunities, and the Balloon Museum saves the best for last.
In the museum’s final corridor — just past a VR headset experience and before the gift shop and food court — are situated eight jewel-toned cubicles staged with props for the perfect minimally decorated but vividly hued Instagram post.
Choose between a massive headless gummy bear, a balloon-filled phone booth, a cloudscape, L.A.-ready angel wings and other poppy backdrops for a one-of-a-kind photo experience. Because if it’s not posted on Instagram, did you even go?
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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