Just a short walk from Emerson College’s Boylston Street campus in Downtown Crossing lies the WNDR museum, an engaging public art experience that explores sight, touch, and sound via 21 different installations for everyone of all ages to enjoy.

“We’re not your typical art museum where you stare at a portrait on a wall; you interact with it, you immerse with it,” said Giancarlo Natale, general manager of Boston’s WNDR Museum.

The goal of the WNDR Museum is to not only have guests get hands-on experience with art pieces, but to reignite the feeling of childhood excitement and awe from seeing fascinating art for the first time.

All 21 art pieces were created by different artists from all around the world with different backgrounds in art. WNDR Studios specifically is the in-house studio where their team cultivates art pieces organically, using different mediums including technology.

Upon entering the windowless rooms, the first installation that can be seen are the glowing “WNDR Flowers” by artist and interior designer Andrew Alford. The exhibit wraps around the walls of the gift shop where you first enter the building. Children of WNDR employees were asked to draw flowers in any way they wanted, and they were upscaled with LED lights that glow in different colors against the dark background.

Following the “WNDR Flowers” is the “Light Floor,” created by WNDR Studios and Brightlogic, a company that specializes in creating pressure activated floors. Inside the walls of the hallway are floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and a generative light floor. In this exhibit, colorful and bright lights follow, growing stronger with each step taken, leaving bursting blue and red particles in one’s wake.

In the next room, “Flex,” by Austin Watson and Pedro Neves, is a color-changing piece of fabric that reacts to pressure, encouraging you to “lean in and touch the fabric,” states the WNDR website.

Similar to “Light Floor,” “Lake Shore Drive (LSD)” is another installation surrounded by mirrors and a light-up reactive floor that changes colors based on movement.

The “Magnetic Symphony” calls back to nostalgic imagery with a tin can telephone exhibit created by WNDR Studios featuring 10 different sections with a different sound programmed into each which encourages guests to hold a tin can to their ears, provoking a conversation about the sounds afterward.

This next exhibit was inspired by the Pepper’s Ghost technique, where light waves bounce off of clear glass placed in different angles, to create a hologram effect. Using innovations developed by John Henry Pepper in 1862, the “MPO-1 (Time Machine),” made by San Francisco-based artist, Joshua Ellingson, showcases a 3D illusion. Projected onto mirrors that are strategically placed, this technique turns 2D videos or images into looking like they are 3D.

Artist Leigh Sachwitz’s exhibition at the museum, “INSIDEOUT,” was inspired by her childhood, specifically the weather she experienced growing up in Glasgow. This 360-degree multimedia exhibit surrounds a makeshift garden shed where patrons can hear the sounds of rain, thunder, and other types of weather as they watch projections on the wall.

The “Living Gallery” exhibit is composed of different art pieces along a wall, most of them portraits of people that are only made discernable upon closer inspection—it’s dynamic in unexpected places, implying art can be found everywhere.

While many of the exhibitions focus on childhood, the “Insta-Nonsense” installation showcases a more modern issue, the impact of social media on your day-to-day life. It shares the idea that not everything you see in the media is real and can be distorted.

Artist Wolfbear addresses another contemporary topic in his work “Untitled, by You” which allows guests to play and experiment with creative AI technology to make something of their own. All guests need to do is submit a text-based prompt and use their imaginations.

Similar to the last installation, “The Wisdom Project” prompts guests to contribute to the art by answering the question, “What do you know for sure?” asked by WNDR Studios, as stated on their website. When guests enter now, they can see the entire wall covered in papers with messages written by previous guests.

The “Speak Up!” exhibit holds red corded telephone machines on the wall. When one picks up the phone, they will hear one of 50 different activists talking about topics important to them.

To explore the concept of light and shadows, the “Dream Sequence” installation displays a hand-wired LED ring that lights up in different colors, demonstrating the contrast between the bright colorful lights and the pitch black walls of the room.

Created by artist Yayoi Kusama, “Let’s Survive Forever” is a room where all four walls are covered with mirrors and mirrored spherical balls that hang from the ceiling as well as strategically placed all over the ground. This installation is the only one where touching is not encouraged and the artist herself requested that time spent in the room is limited, according to the WNDR website.

The “Obliteration Room,” now an explosion of color, began as a blank white canvas. Initially intended for children, this interactive art piece encourages all guests to decorate the room with neon circular stickers provided by the museum wherever they want, leaving the room “obliterated” with colors.

At the “WNDRWall” exhibit, “your existence controls what you see” according to the WNDR website. The movement of colors projected onto the wall was created by digital artist Simon Burgin and explores the idea that anything one sees can be art.

As the WNDR motto states, “We are all artists,” on their website, the installation, “We Are All Artists (If Only We Knew?)” emphasizes a similar idea that art is subjective and can be whatever we want it to be. We are all artists in some shape or form.

In “Iris,” Natale’s favorite exhibit, guests can have a picture of their iris taken and have an up close view of their eye projected onto the wall.

“Glorious Vision of a Rainbow” is exactly what it sounds like. Made by artist Andy Arkley, this installation showcases vibrant colors and different shapes merged into a single piece.

The last installation of the WNDR Museum is “Color & Light.” The creators at WNDR Studios covered the room in different shades of the rainbow that is until the timer goes off and the colors shift into a monochromatic yellow hue.

The WNDR Museum is open every day for guests to explore for themselves, Downtown Crossing being the largest location to date.  Every Thursday, the WNDR Museum hosts College Night offering 20% off to students with a valid college ID.