Normally I am quick to correct people (even if only in my mind) who say “All is not what it seems.”  The reason I am so quick to correct is because usually what they mean by that statement is that “not all is what it seems” (meaning, some things are potentially wrong, and some are potentially right) — as opposed to “all is not what it seems” (meaning, everything is potentially wrong).

In reference to the Museum of Illusions in New York City, however,  the phrasing is a rare instance where it actually means what it is intended to mean.  Here “ALL is not what it seems.”  Which is another way of saying Nothing is what it seems.  Because everything you see at the Museum of Illusions — not just some of it — is a trick.

It is well worth it to visit just to get pictures to confuse and confound your friends, and to get a good laugh,  even if you don’t learn anything about the optical illusions that can alter your perceived reality.

One of the coolest exhibits is the chair that makes whoever sits in it look tiny in relation to another person who is standing in the foreground. There is also a bench that can make you look (in a photograph) like you’re doing a handstand off the side of it without any help. And many other neat things. It is probably even better if you visit after ingesting some potentially hallucinogenic substance, which I did not, but the two friends I went with had done just that.

Even without, I laughed the whole way through.  And there was no trickery to that.