How would you describe your best friend in one word?
Wait, don’t answer that. Let a HBO documentarian do it for you — by engraving it on a pocketknife — with “The Golden Word,” a first-ever “bespoke gifting exhibition” from the oddball menagerie Museum, opening today.
Here’s the skinny: you have a friend. You want to buy him/her a gift. So you make an appointment with artist/filmmaker Van Neistat. He engraves the recipient’s name in 14K gold leaf on one side of a Victorinox “SwissChamp” knife. On the other side, he engraves a “golden word.”
Here’s the catch: you don’t choose that word. Van Neistat chooses it for you – or rather, “divines it from you,” after conversing with you about the recipient for 15 minutes.
Here’s the other catch: you can’t buy one for yourself. They can only be given as gifts.
This is atypical weirdness, even for New York’s smallest museum, which is housed in a tricked-out freight elevator in a Tribeca alley and exhibits bizarre antiquities from around the world — ranging from combs and IDs exhumed from the ocean floor, to wicked-looking homemade weaponry, to the shoe thrown at President George W. Bush.
Who can also be described in one word, but that word is up to you.
This article was featured in the InsideHook NY newsletter. Sign up now for more from all five boroughs.
