New Art Immersive Experience Coming To Milwaukee

The Beyond Van Gogh experience at the Wisconsin Center was so successful that the convention center district and exhibit designer are partnering again on a new immersive experience showcasing the work of Claude Monet.

Beyond Van Gogh, which twice had its Milwaukee run extended, finished as the highest-grossing event in Wisconsin Center District history. Approximately 196,000 tickets were sold for the experience, which lasted from July 2021 through early January.

The new experience, designed by Montreal-based Normal Studio, is expected to follow a format to the Vincent van Gogh experience.

Approximately 400 pieces created by Monet, a French impressionist painter, will be projected floor-to-ceiling in a 360-degree format while music plays. The setup is known as an “infinity room,” exactly the type of thing that works well in a windowless convention hall.

Pieces that are part of the experience include Monet’s “Water Lillies” series, “Impression, Sunrise,” and “Poppy Field.”

Normal Studio and production company Paquin Entertainment Group expect visitors to spend approximately one hour in the experience.

Individuals can register on MonetMilwaukee.com to be given access to presale tickets, but a specific starting date has not been announced beyond “fall 2022.”

The Monet experience has already run in Toronto, Canada and is scheduled to launch soon stateside in Honolulu and Miami. It will also be offered in Calgary and Ottawa.

What’s causing the proliferation of immersive art experiences across the world? A confluence of factors. Given the age of the artists, the work is available in the public domain which makes it less costly to assemble, projection technology is also at a point where creating the virtually-automated immersion room is feasible and, with concerns about COVID-19 still present, the art experience has a built-in social distancing nature.

Beyond Van Gogh has sold more than 2.5 million tickets to date and isn’t even the only immersive Van Gogh experience. Given the availability of the artwork, multiple firms have created experiences featuring the artist.

Art museums have also seen a surge in attendance since the pandemic took hold.