If you’re a fan of post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh’s swirling opus “The Starry Night,” you can practically swim in his masterpiece at “Beyond Van Gogh: An Immersive Experience,” a pop-up art gathering in South Florida.
Or was it called “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience”?
Um, or maybe it was “Lasting Impressions: The 3D LED Experience”? No, no, it was definitely called “Van Gogh Alive.”
Actually, it’s all of them.
If all this sounds confusing, know that competing immersive van Gogh experiences, each similarly named, are suddenly in bloom across the country – and three of them will visit Miami this spring.
During these nationally touring experiences masked-up patrons stroll, socially distanced, through galleries filled with vivid color protections. Visions of van Gogh’s “Almond Blossoms” (1890) and “The Potato Eaters” (1885) bounce across the walls, visitors wander through projected fields of sunflowers, colors explode, and a music score plays to the Dutch master’s works.
The first, “Beyond Van Gogh: An Immersive Experience,” will debut April 15 at Miami’s Ice Palace Studios (1400 N. Miami Ave.; 305-347-7400), and is billed as an “engaging journey” where rooms are filled with “cutting-edge projection technology” and 300 masterpieces have been “freed from their frames,” which is a fancy way of saying no real van Goghs will be displayed.
But it’s not the same as “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience,” opening May 8 at a to-be-announced Miami venue. Presented by event company Fever and European producers Exhibition Hub, the experience is described as a “20,000-square-foot light and sound spectacular featuring two-story projections” of van Gogh’s paintings. The difference? Here, visitors wear virtual-reality headsets.
Which is not remotely similar to “Lasting Impressions: The 3D LED Experience,” running May 19-June 16 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. That show features what the venue calls “a towering, experiential installation” of 100 Impressionist masterpieces projected with 3D and LED technology on the 18,000-square-foot Ziff Ballet Opera House stage. The show includes van Gogh but also Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne and Seurat, with paintings scored to the music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
There’s even a fourth, if you’re willing to schlep to Florida’s Gulf Coast. “Van Gogh Alive!” at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg (through June 13) adds, to its light and sound projections, aromas of cypress, lemon and sandalwood to evoke the smells of the South of France, where van Gogh lived until his death by suicide in 1890.
What’s with all the van Goghs? For one, they’re designed with pandemic browsing in mind. Last year’s Netflix series “Emily in Paris” helped fuel part of the frenzy after setting one of its pivotal Parisian scenes inside a van Gogh experience.
Further adding to the confusion are simultaneous van Gogh experiences in Boston, Charlotte, Atlanta, San Francisco, Vancouver, Chicago and Philadelphia, bearing names like “Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition,” or the “Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit.” Even the Better Business Bureau issued a warning in March after ticket buyers complained on social media that they bought advance passes to wrong events because the names looked too similar.
“Is this the same exhibit as the Van Gogh exhibit at the Dali Museum in St Pete?” asks one commenter on the “Beyond Van Gogh” Miami Facebook page, mistakenly referring to the Dali’s ongoing “Van Gogh Alive” display in St. Petersburg (through June 13). “I’m confused I bought my tickets through Fever and the first available was in June and did not have a location. Are those tickets not valid?” asks another commenter who bought passes to “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience” in Miami – instead of “Beyond Van Gogh.”
So which van Gogh experience is the right one? Answer: The one where you don’t show up to the wrong venue.
“Beyond Van Gogh: An Immersive Experience” at Ice Palace Studios, 1400 N. Miami Ave., in Miami, opens April 15. Tickets: $30.99-$93.99 via VanGoghMiami.com. “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience,” at a TBA Miami location, opens May 8. Tickets: $19.90-$54.50 via VanGoghExpo.com. “Lasting Impressions: The 3D LED Experience” at Adrienne Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., in Miami, opens May 19. Tickets: $44.10-$89.25 via ArshtCenter.org. “Van Gogh Alive” at the Dali Museum, 1 Dali Blvd., St. Petersburg, is open through June 13. Tickets: $10-$25 via TheDali.org.
