Immersive art: The light shows that are eclipsing traditional museums
Have you ever wanted to feel as if you’ve stepped inside a van Gogh painting? In 2021, “you’ve got options,” said Brian Boucher in ArtNet.com. At least four different Instagram-friendly light installations inspired by the work of the one-eared Dutch wonder are being mounted at various sites across the U.S. At the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., a multisensory show featuring large projections of van Gogh’s most famous works opened in November. In March, a Canadian entertainment company is scheduled to launch “Immersive van Gogh” in
San Francisco. Three months later, a permanent installation titled “LUME,” produced by the same Australian firm behind the Florida show, will take over the contemporary art galleries at Indianapolis’ Newfields museum. It’s a “transcontinental battle of illuminated van Goghs”—and it would have been even bigger had a Parisian outfit not recently decided to postpone its New York City debut until 2022.
Even the pandemic hasn’t halted the rise of immersive art experiences, said Zachary Small in The New York Times. Though major for-profit players have had to postpone openings and slash workforces, investors are at this very moment pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars” into the companies poised to dominate this emerging entertainment industry when travel restrictions are finally lifted. The gambit “has surprised market watchers,” and comes as many nonprofit traditional museums struggle to hang on. But experiential art has a solid track record of attracting ticket buyers hungry for dramatic selfie backdrops. The Santa Fe–based collective Meow Wolf welcomed half a million visitors into its 70-room art funhouse in 2019, inspiring plans to spin off similar complexes in four other U.S. cities. A venture called Superblue that aims to showcase the experiential contemporary art of such proven museum draws as James Turrell and the Tokyo-based collective TeamLab is pushing ahead with plans for two additional for-profit art centers even after Covid forced postponement of the opening of its Miami flagship.
For good reason, the rise of immersive art “makes the art world nervous,” said Brian Droitcour in Art in America. The cost of producing these high-tech experiences bars independent artists from participating, while the focus on the pleasure a viewer takes in documenting the experience for social media blurs the line between art and marketing. Still, who can dismiss the joy generated by a TeamLab installation that allows visitors to “splash” across the surface of a koi pond and transform the fish swimming underfoot into bursts of flowers? As could be said of any previous art form, “the best immersive work draws on historical traditions and contemporary vernaculars, melding different ways of looking and making. The new art is unlike last century’s art. That’s what makes it exciting.”