text: It's been many, many years since I walked down a city street with a helium balloon on a string, but Mattress Factory Art Museum let me to do just that.  Sometimes you just have sing like no one is listening and bob down the street with your balloon like no one's watching...or pointing...or taking pictures of the freak.\n\nHusband is not the *biggest* art museum fan (tho I'm slowly chipping away at him), so I was over-the-moon when he turned to me with a big grin on his face after paying a visit to the MFAM and announced how much he loved the place.  And for the AD/HD-afflicted gent that he is, MFAM's installation art exhibits are perfect.  They allow for you to walk through, participate, operate, or touch just about all of them, drawing you in and literally making you part of the art.\n\nMFAM's two galleries -- the former Stearns & Foster mattress factory on Sampsonia and a row home a couple blocks away on Monterey -- house a small but powerful collection.  The permanent collection includes transsexual and drug addicted Greer Lankton's sensory stimulating \"It's All about ME, Not You\"; double mirrored-rooms plastered with polka dots that invite you to dance or make silly faces by Yayoi Kusama; and the sensory *depriving*, pitch black art of James Turrell, punctuated unexpectedly by colored light.  \n\nFor its temporary exhibits, MFAM brings artists from all over the world to Pittsburgh, sets them up in their very own artists' residences, and gives them free reign over their own gallery space in one of the museum's two buildings.  The result is thrilling (Jeremy Ficca's hovering floorboards), amusing (Gill Wildman's \"House Says\", in which he stenciled cheeky phrases and sayings all over the walls, doors, and even the exterior of 1414 Monterey), and poignant, like \"Wish Exchange Dandelion\" by Ling He.  Enter the room full of crystal-colored balloons dangling ribbon tails from the ceiling and realize the ribbons are covered with the hopes and dreams of patrons who've come before you: \"I wish my sister could stop doing drugs,\" \"I want my son to be happy and healthy,\" \"I hope Obama wins in 2012\"...write your own wish on a balloon's ribbon and leave it behind; but only if you take someone else's with you.  I left my dream behind and took, \"I wish I was artistic\" with me on our walk back through the Mexican War Streets and Allegheny Commons.\n\nMFAM (and its insanely awesome, hip & trendy, arty-farty gift shop) is a place that will bring out your kid-at-heart.