More than 120 years after his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the stomach, the mystique of Vincent Van Gogh remains as powerful as ever. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently placed all 16 of its Van Gogh paintings on display together for the first time and a pop-up exhibit displaying replicas of his paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has embarked upon a tour of America – at shopping malls.
The first stop is the King of Prussia Mall outside of Philadelphia through October 14th.
Why shopping malls?
“It is the Museum’s mission to make the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh and his contemporaries accessible to as many people as possible,” Josh Blogg, executive director of Retail is Detail, the company producing the pop-up exhibit, said. “By developing the pop-up, the museum has found an easy access for people to encounter with Van Gogh’s art who normally wouldn’t go to a museum, or would not have the opportunity to come to the Netherlands. The pop-up is like a sneak preview to what the Van Gogh Museum offers in the Netherlands, and it even enables people to acquire a replica which is as close to the original as it gets, so they can enjoy Vincent Van Gogh’s art on a daily basis.”
About those replicas.
Van Gogh’s original paintings are delicate and priceless, transporting them outside of the museum can be hazardous, so the museum began exploring new ways and techniques of sharing his work with a global audience. To create the replicas, the original works are scanned by means of a multi-dimensional scanner, thus recording the exact relief of the painting taking place at the Van Gogh Museum. Secondly, the three-dimensional-scan is combined with a professional, high-resolution, two-dimensional print. Then follows a color-matching process with the original painting.
Size, colors and relief are reproduced as accurately as possible, making use of the highest-quality inks and materials. Van Gogh Museum experts closely monitor the entire production process together with specialists from Fujifilm Belgium.
What’s more, you can own one.
The Van Gogh Museum has commissioned a limited-edition collection called “Van Gogh Museum Editions.”
These three-dimensional, numbered and certified reproductions of Van Gogh masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum are produced by a new process called “reliefography.” The Van Gogh Museum describes “reliefography” as “combin(ing) state-of-the-art imaging, scanning and printing technologies with painstaking handcraft by master restoration experts.”
Van Gogh Museum Editions are available for purchase at the pop-up. You can read more about the series and reproduction process, which mimics each brushstroke, here.
The idea for taking Van Gogh to the mall came from a Retail is Detail mall client wanting to investigate the use of short term arts and culture events as pop-ups.
“We pitched this idea to the Van Gogh Museum Special Museum editions department,” Blogg said. “The Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam has the intention to further raise its international profile and global appeal, sustain, and where possible, increase its preservation and educational tasks in order to further enhance the legacy of Vincent Van Gogh as it is presently exhibited in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. In order to achieve these goals, there is a need to raise significant additional funding on a global scale for the Museum and its unique collection.”
(If you ever have the privilege of seeing an original Van Gogh in person, and you'll never forget it if you do, please don't touch it like the visitor to the pop-up is shown doing in the video above.)
Adult admission to the pop-up is $5 at the King of Prussia Mall.
Locations were selected in cooperation with Simon Properties and Taubmann Malls. Following the King of Prussia stop, the tour will continue to the following destinations:
New Jersey: Short Hills – December 2018/January 2019 confirmed
Houston: The Galleria - February/March 2019 exact dates to be confirmed
Boston: Copley Place - March/April 2019 exact dates to be confirmed
Hartford: West Farms - May /June 2019 exact dates to be confirmed
Denver: Cherry Creek - August/September 2019 exact dates to be confirmed
Los Angeles: Beverly Center - October/November 2019 exact dates to be confirmed
“The reaction to date has been extremely positive,” Blogg said of the King of Prussia pop-up. “Both the Editions and the merchandise in the POP UP shop have exceeded expectations. We have had lots of parents with children and also seniors of well over 90 years of age that all were touched by the artist.”
