Maria Cassilly, archivist and tours manager at the City Museum, kicked off the month with a jump-scare more startling than any Fourth of July fireworks. Weaving her way through the City Museum’s newest exhibit, Labyrinth, on a routine safety check, she came face to face with herself…more than a few times over.
A feature of the museum’s new Labyrinth exhibit, The Hall of Mirrors was added just three days before the maze is to make its public debut and perfectly encapsulates the ever-evolving artistic process at the City Museum. “It’s a new experience each time,” Cassilly says.
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The museum’s full-time team of artists and contractors–coined “the crew”–has been designing the exhibit for seven years, and the effort marks the largest new feature the City Museum has seen since 2018. One honorary member of the crew is local cartoonist and printmaker, Dan Zettwoch, who designed the map posted outside the maze entrance.
Explorers of the maze should expect the eclectic, unvarnished style the museum is known for, but in shades darker than some of the window-filled spaces of other areas. Features to be discovered include the towering wall of Twinkie pans scored at the Hostess factory auction, as well as the antique 1919 boilers from the International Shoe Company Factory–the building in which City Museum is housed.
These historic nods to St. Louis and the personal history of the museum reflect the belief of the late artist and co-founder of the museum, Bob Cassilly, who said, “The allusion of danger is essential for any kind of adventure.” By including such a variety of funky materials, paired with the moody lighting and background music, the crew has created the illusion of a maze that looks more daunting than it actually is.
Danger is not imminent within Labyrinth at all, with everything built to playground standards, but the feeling of unexpected thrill is ever-present. Guests old and young should come with a willingness to get lost in the varying mouse holes and mufflers, like Joel Heckaman, marketing strategist at the museum, who knows that sense of adventure first-hand. “We’ve been in there for weeks, and we keep getting stumped,” Heckaman says.
The exhibit has integrated well into the museum, Cassilly relays, in a perfect storm of sorts. “We are always asking this building to do things it was not designed to do,” she laughs, but the storied former factory has held up, despite all challenges. Another such “perfect storm” of twists and turns occurred when ownership transferred to Premier Parks in 2019.
The larger company was able to keep the urban jungle-gym afloat during the 2020 pandemic, allowing St. Louis to continue to enjoy hidden wonders both old and new. Thankfully so, Cassilly says, as the City Museum is a place that “rewards close inspection and revisiting.”
As St. Louis radio personality Judi Diamond of KLOU says, while looking up in awe, “Just when you think you’ve seen everything here…more!” Diamond advises coming back time and again to find new corners and crouches of City Museum’s Labyrinth.
Members will get a special preview on the mornings of July 4, 5, and 6 from 10–11 a.m. Otherwise, Labyrinth is included in general admission all other hours of the day.
