High-tech, immersive art show 'Beyond Van Gogh' debuts in downtown Jacksonville

You don't need to know anything about art history to recognize Vincent Van Gogh's "The Starry Night."

At a new "immersive" art show opening this week in downtown Jacksonville, you'll be able to actually get inside the famed painting, and 300 or so of the 19th-century Dutch master's most famous works.

Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience opens Friday in what used to be First Baptist Church of Jacksonville’s main auditorium on Beaver Street in downtown Jacksonville. The building was gutted and refitted to accommodate the Van Gogh show, which uses high-tech projectors to transform the 30,000-square-foot venue into an entirely new way to experience art.

Previous coverage: Interactive Van Gogh exhibit coming to Jacksonville in September

Sneak peek: A look at 'Beyond Van Gogh' immersive art show opening in Jacksonville

Visitors will start out in an Introduction Hall, where Van Gogh's own words are used to introduce him. Fanny Curtat, art historian for the project, said Van Gogh is misunderstood by many art fans, who know him only from his painting and the infamous incident where he cut off part of his own left ear. But he also wrote hundreds of letters to his brother and patron over the course of 18 years that show the man behind the artworks, and those very words are used to introduce him to visitors at the new show.

"He’s a unique case in art history because you have so much insight into his life," Curtat said last week in a phone interview from her home in Montreal. "You get this connection with him. You feel you know him. He’s his own enemy, he’s fighting his own demons. There's something that's so strong, so relatable in that. He’s far from this mad genius he’s often painted to be."

Visitors will then enter the Waterfall Room, where Curtat said people will walk against a current of projected images to set the tone for the main Immersive Room. There, the walls and floors are covered in projections of 300 of Van Gogh's most famous works, on a 35-minute loop. All told, there are 4 trillion content pixels involved in the show, bringing the artworks to life in a high-resolution, 360-degree moving spectacle.

Curtat said it takes about an hour to experience the whole thing, and tickets are being sold on a timed basis to limit the number of people inside at one time. There is no limit on how long visitors can stay, she said, and some may choose to spend more time learning about the man in the Education Room while others would rather experience the eye-popping wonder of the Immersive Room.

She said you don't need to be a Van Gogh scholar to appreciate the show.

"Absolutely not," Curtat said. "People assume museums can be a bit cumbersome. Art is about connecting with people, no matter what you know about the artwork to begin with. This is such a wonderful way of connecting with the artist and discovering that a 19th-century artist can still be relevant to a 21st-century audience."

Van Gogh's works are particularly well suited to a show like this, Curtat said, because many of his pieces have a sense of movement to them. At Beyond Van Gogh, they actually move. "His paintings seem to be leaping off the wall," she said. "People remember the movement of 'Starry Night' more than anything about the painting."

One of her favorite things to do in each city where the show opens is to watch kids take it in. They have no clue who Van Gogh is or why he's important to art history, but they just have fun at the show. The show was created during the pandemic, with everyone working remotely, so planners didn't really know what to expect until it first opened in May 2021. Once they saw how the kids appreciated it, they knew they were on to something. "They get to run around, be free, just follow the light, follow the brush strokes," she said.

The show is produced by Paquin Entertainment Group. There are up to eight versions of the show on tour at any given time and about 3.5 million people have seen it in about a year and a half. It's running in Anchorage, Charleston, Hartford, Omaha and Reno, and opening soon in El Paso, Sacramento and McAllen, Texas. The shows are nearly identical, Curtat said, with a few adjustments based on the venue. Jacksonville is the show's third stop in Florida, after Miami and Sarasota, and it comes later to Pensacola, Tallahassee and West Palm Beach.

The first two weeks of the show's Jacksonville run are nearly sold out. It is scheduled to be in town until Nov. 6.

The building housing the show, as well as the parking garage across the street, were purchased in June for $8.55 million by a partnership of Corner Lot Development and JWB Real Estate Capital.  Plans call for the hall to be used as a regional event space after the Van Gogh show closes.

Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience

Friday-Nov. 6 at Immersive Art Space, 119 W. Beaver St.

10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, closed Mondays and Tuesdays

$39.99-$59.99 for adults, $23.99-$28.99 for ages 5-15, free for ages 4 and younger

(800) 441-0819, vangoghjacksonville.com

What the critics said

"The artist’s jittery brushstrokes come to life like ocean currents. Pipe smoke, clouds, the swirling cosmos, and rippling cypress trees, the imagery surrounds you on all sides in the massive room — and even flows beneath your feet. It’s trippy, to say the least." - Marty Fugate, special to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune 

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Beyond Van Gogh Immersive art experience opens in Jacksonville