Each year, the Mona Lisa receives around 8 to 10 million visitors. That’s between 30,000 and 50,000 people every day. Some visitors can wait in line for up to two hours to get to the front. The painting is emblematic of the French gallery, despite being painted by an Italian artist. Meanwhile, Michelangelo’s David is synonymous with Florence, where it has stood since it was carved in 1501. Some artworks literally cannot leave their location, for reasons that range from fragility and conservation to legal wills and statutory laws. Edvard Munch’s Vampire (1895), for example, at the Munchmuseet is Norway had become so damaged and fragile that the gallery stopped allowing it to leave the premises. It is this type of artwork, locked into their institutional locations, that forms the basis of an immersive VR experience from Museo Del Prado.
Masterpieces: A Virtual Experience of the Museo del Prado makes its US debut this autumn, at Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn, New York. The 30-minute, multi-user virtual reality experience, designed – directed, and created by ACCIONA Cultura – brings visitors up close with five of the Prado’s most celebrated works of art. Some of the works involved rarely travel, whilst others cannot leave the Prado, meaning the originals can only be experienced in Madrid. New York is only the latest in a long line of destinations, following Buenos Aires Tokyo and Shanghai, demonstrating the power of immersive technologies to bring beloved artworks to wider audiences. For those who can’t travel, thing brings art to their doorstep.
The featured works are: The Sense of Sight by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel; Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez; Venus and Adonis by Paolo Veronese; Witches’ Sabbath by Francisco de Goya; and The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. The experience combines original storytelling, music, richly designed 3D environments and rigorous curatorship, offering a new way to discover and understand these works. Audiences are guided by the voice of a fictional security guard on his final night shift before retirement, journeying through an imaginary museum and stepping beyond the canvas.
Here, audiences can step into a swirling performance of The Garden of Earthly Delights, where characters from the paintings dance below glowing stage lights. Elsewhere, Las Meninas, a complex snapshot of life in the Madrid royal court of King Philip IV, is broken up into distinct, framed sections, allowing audience to take each piece of the intricate masterpiece in turn. Visitors move through interpretations of each work as the paintings expand beyond their frames into three-dimensional environments, exploring together through free-roam, multi-user VR. Masterpieces offers a new way to engage with stories, symbolism and detail, representing an evolution in the museum experience.
Galleries and museums have always presented draw for travellers, with holiday destinations often selected based on the paintings that can be seen. Here, these exclusive experiences are taken around the world, opening up the experience of walking around the Museo Del Prado to people at the other side of the world. It’s an exciting and innovative use of VR, and joins a growing trend of institutions employing immersive technologies to engage audiences in new and innovative ways. It’s an offering not to be missed.
ACCIONA Cultura’s Masterpieces: A Virtual Experience of the Museo del Prado is at Powerhouse Arts, Brooklyn until 20 December.
Words: Emma Jacob
All images courtesy of Museo del Prado.
