Here’s Our Guide to Every Single One of the Nearly 50 Immersive Van Gogh Experiences Blanketing the U.S., and What Makes Each Unique

Installation view of *Beyond Van Gogh* Image courtesy Beyond Van Gogh.

As far as we can remember, there has never been a phenomenon like the immersive Van Gogh craze currently sweeping America

Maybe it’s the enduring popularity of the Dutch artist. Maybe it’s the hunger for in-the-world experiences after a year of quarantine. Maybe it’s that one scene in Emily in Paris… but whatever it is, the hunger to venture into a giant animated projection of a Van Gogh painting is real, and it’s everywhere.

Ads with “Gogh”-themed puns (“Gogh with Mom,” “It’s Safe to Gogh,” “Don’t Wait to Gogh,” etc.) are blanketing nearly 40 different cities across the U.S. and saturating social media feeds. In some cities, such as selfie-crazed L.A., upcoming immersive Van Gogh exhibitions are all but sold out well before they open.

Installation view of Immersive Van Gogh. Image courtesy Immersive Van Gogh.

Some are already open. Others are about to open. Some don’t even have announced venues yet, but are selling out fast.

No fewer than five different corporate entities are currently dueling it out across the map for supremacy in the Van Gogh space, causing the Better Business Bureau to issue an alert to consumers to make sure they get the Van Gogh light show that they want. In cities like Detroit, one company has snapped up the website VanGoghDetroit.com while its nemesis owns DetroitVanGogh.com.

So what’s the difference between all these experiences? Here’s a breakdown.

—Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is the vision of Mathieu St-Arnaud, creative director of Montreal-based Normal Studio, a projection-mapping outfit that has previously worked with the Montreal symphony and brought the Diary of Anne Frank to life. Beyond Van Gogh promises “300 of Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic artworks,” brought to life with music and “the artist’s own dreams, thoughts, and words.”

Installation view of Imagine Van Gogh. Image courtesy Imagine Van Gogh.

—Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition claims to employ a signature technique of immersive projection so visceral that they do not show videos on their website, because this would fail to capture the experience. Conceived by Annabelle Mauger and Julien Baron, associated with the immersive attraction known as the Cathédrale d’Images in France, Imagine Van Gogh is an animated projected collage of some 200 paintings from the final two years of Van Gogh’s life, all accompanied by classical hits by Saint-Saëns, Mozart, Bach, Delibes and Satie. There is also a “pedagogical room,” conceived with art historian Androulla Michael.

—Immersive Van Gogh is the brainchild of Italian film producer Massimiliano Siccardi. It promises, via 100 projectors, an hour-long experience completely bathing visitors in Vincent Van Gogh’s greatest hits, accompanied by “experimental electronic music with pure, ethereal and simple-seeming piano” by composer Luca Longobardi (for the New York incarnation, Hamilton production designer David Korins has been brought on for extra oomph). Siccardi and Longobardi are the team behind the Van Gogh, Starry Night experience at Paris’s L’Atelier des Lumières seen in the Netflix show Emily in Paris, if that’s important to you.

Installation view of Van Gogh Alive. Image courtesy Van Gogh Alive.

—Van Gogh Alive comes courtesy Grande Experiences, also the braintrust behind such exhibitions as Monet & Friends and Planet Shark. Focusing on the period between 1880 and 1890, it promises “more than 3,000 Van Gogh images at enormous scale” via 40 projectors, augmented to show the Dutch artist’s sources of inspiration and set to “a powerful classical score.”

—Finally, Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, a partnership between producer Exhibition Hub and “entertainment discovery platform” Fever promises to wrap you in more than 400 Van Gogh works using a trademarked video mapping technology. On top of the light show, there is a drawing studio, galleries that offer info about Van Gogh’s life and work, and an (optional) 10-minute VR experience called A Day in the Life of the Artist in Arles.

Phew!

Now, if you’re wondering whether a Van Gogh show is coming to your region (it probably is), here’s a round-up of nearly 50 U.S. shows based on the best available information.