If you love to spend hours watching YouTube tutorials from beauty gurus and know your Glossier from your Givenchy, you’ll be happy to hear that the world's first museum dedicated to makeup is now open in New York City.
The Makeup Museum opened its doors earlier this month with an exhibition dedicated to the history of make-up and its impact on society. The debut exhibition is called Pink Jungle: 1950s Makeup in America, featuring staple moments and products from the decade; showcasing how beauty trends were influenced by silver screen stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, as well as offering a critical look at the Euro-centric beauty ideals of the era.
“The Makeup Museum is a critical institution for the cultural landscape of New York because makeup has a 10,000-year history. There is so much that the Makeup Museum wants and has to explore,” said the Museum’s Executive Director and Co-Founder Doreen Bloch in a statement. “The 1950s is a perfect time period [...] to start with [...] because the 1950s [are] the birth of the modern cosmetics industry”.
The debut exhibition of the Makeup Museum features a mix of visual artefacts and educational information as well as aesthetic spaces and interactive stations and treats such as the never-before-seen digital archive of the journals of make-up guru Kevyn Aucoin. The museum also lets guests explore the history and evolution of make-up and its impact of society, tracing some of its earliest roots in ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece right up to the baking, contouring and cut crease techniques we've learned from contemporary drag queens.
The museum is one of the first in New York City to open its doors after postponing its May 1 opening date due to the pandemic. And curators have completely reimagined the experience to keep in line with public health guidelines. It's operating at 16% capacity with staged entry times. Guests will be asked to download an app to interact with digitally-activated to displays in order to foster a contactless-free environment. Temperature screening is in place and masks must be worn indoors at all times.
The Makeup Museum is located at 94 Gansevoort Street in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. Tickets are priced from $25 and are on sale here
This article was first published on October 4, 2019 and updated on September 14, 2020.
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