Many thrill ride enthusiasts view roller coasters as an art form. Now, an artist and a museum have adopted the same perspective with Brava!, a coaster designed by visual artist EJ Hill and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts. Brava just may be the first life-size operating coaster to open inside a museum, and judging by the response, it’s a hit.
“I’ve been humbled by and grateful for folks’ embrace of Brava!,” says Alexandra Foradas, curator at MASS MoCA. “I think EJ’s understanding of roller coasters as monuments to the possibility of attaining joy has really resonated with people.” Foradas reveals that she first approached Hill about working together on an exhibition after seeing some of his previous projects, including Pillar, an outdoor wooden roller coaster track in a plaza at the 2017 57th Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition in Italy.
Hill tells Funworld that as a child living in Southern California, he’d watch the coasters at Six Flags Magic Mountain as he rode past the park on the freeway with his parents. “From a distance, they’re almost lyrical, and when you get up close, they’re rapturous!” he says. “I love how roller coasters can offer so many different things at once—thrill, excitement, fear, anxiety, pleasure, and bliss. A lot of contemporary art attempts to do what roller coasters do so effortlessly every day. I’ve always thought that they were the purest form of sculpture, and now I get to share that sentiment with audiences who might have never considered them as such.”
Brava! opened Oct. 30, 2022, as part of Hill’s Brake Run Helix exhibition and is on display within a two-level gallery at MASS MoCA until January 2024. The operational ride stretches 263 feet, with 15 track sections forming the shape of a figure eight.
“Each piece of track is riveted together under a patent we have,” says Chris Gray, partner and vice president of Skyline Attractions in Orlando, which created the ride track and helped assemble the coaster. “All the track pieces were riveted together, and the completed segments of track were then bolted together. No certified welder or fit-up guy is needed.”
Gray says Skyline Attractions presented multiple layouts to MASS MoCA before receiving the winning bid for the project. Though Skyline was working with a museum and not an amusement park on this project, Gray is quite complimentary of the museum. “The MASS MoCA team was amazing to work with. The museum’s crew was so good that any concern we had went away the first hour of working with them. They knew what they were getting into, and it turned out to be one of the best jobs I’ve been on in a long time.”
The coaster’s operation allows one museum guest to ride it each hour, chosen via online registration on MASS MoCA’s website. Seated in the one-person vehicle, a rider is propelled off the museum’s mezzanine level with the assistance of a museum attendant. The car then descends the gravity-driven coaster’s first drop, rises over a second hill, navigates a downward helix, and takes a rapid S-bend before slowing to a stop. The entire ride is inside the museum, allowing for safe operation indoors that is unaffected by disruptive Massachusetts weather patterns.
“Every hour, as each ride draws near, an enthusiastic crowd gathers in the gallery to watch someone ride Brava!—you can feel the buzz of an audience anticipating a performance,” says Foradas. “When riding Brava!, you emerge from behind a two‑story velvet curtain and follow the 263 feet of track before coming to rest on a wooden stage. I’ve been particularly moved that when a rider finishes, the visitors watching invariably give them (and Brava!) an enthusiastic round of applause!”
So why would a contemporary art museum be interested in a roller coaster? Foradas says the way Hill incorporates both installation and performance into his art was particularly exciting, and the artist’s style resonates with the way MASS MoCA works at the confluence of visual and performing arts. “He sees physical experiences of joy, like roller coasters, as methods of learning, a way of thinking that feels like an important alternative or addition to the types of knowledge we’re often taught to value within the American education system.”
Skyline Attractions has made the patented riveted track used on Brava! the basis of the company’s P’Sghetti Bowl line of family coasters.
As to the fate of Brava! after January 2024, Foradas says hopefully another institution will be excited to host the project and the exhibition will travel.
For artist Hill, he’s thrilled with the way Brava! turned out. “It came out so much better than I had imagined—I still can’t believe it’s real! I would have been more than happy with a 30‑feet‑long section of straight track for my first roller coaster. Instead, my first one out the gate was Brava! I mean, come on, how cool is that?”
