The Musée d'Orsay has just announced that its latest exhibition of Vincent van Gogh It broke all previous attendance records, attracting a total of 793,556 visitors, or an average of 7,181 per day. The show's AI and immersive virtual reality experiences were widely derided in the press, but proved persuasive to new audiences.
“Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise”, which closed last Sunday, brought together canvases from the last two months of the post-impressionist artist’s life. In this short but prolific period, in the mid-1890s, Van Gogh lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town on the outskirts of Paris, and made 74 paintings.
The exhibition was the most visited in the history of the Musée d'Orsay, easily surpassing the 724,414 visitors who visited “Edvard Munch: A Poem of Life, Love and Death” in 2022, as reported in Le Monde. The third most visited exhibition at the Paris museum was “Picasso: Azul e Rosa”, from 2018, which attracted 670,667 art lovers.
Although a museum exhibition in a major artistic capital dedicated to one of the most beloved painters in history already has all the ingredients to be a box office success, the Musée d'Orsay surprised the public with some new and technologically advanced elements. One of them was the reincarnation of Van Gogh who was trained on the artist's letters, although his reflections were anachronistic to the point of absurdity, according to a Guardian reporter.
“The truth of my motivation remains a mystery even to me. Thank you for understanding my mental health difficulties,” he said. Van Gogh to a museum visitor who demanded that he explain the reason for his death by suicide. Van Gogh speaks with a harsh English accent, despite his Dutch origins.
“I saw no other way to find peace,” he admitted to a reporter from The New York Times. It was a surprisingly intimate confession from a man who had not had the opportunity to speak for more than a century.
The museum has also hosted a VR-based experience that uses the final palette of Van Gogh as a portal to transport visitors to its pictorial landscapes. The trip was narrated by Marguerite Gachet, daughter of the doctor of Van Gogh. Through its account, the experience attempted to provide some biographical information about the activities and encounters of Van Gogh during his last months.
VR fans who missed this immersive exhibition experience Van Gogh last fall will have another chance to wear a headset at the Musée d'Orsay's upcoming “Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism” exhibition, which opens in March. This time, visitors will be invited to join an evening in Paris with some of their favorite impressionist painters.
It looked like the public's wild enthusiasm for immersive arts experiences might be waning last year when a prominent producer was forced to file for bankruptcy.
Source: Artnet News