By: Viviana Manzo
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fever/ Abigail Acevedo-Flores
Montebello, CA (The Hollywood Times) July 15, 2023 – “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”, Vincent Van Gogh.
Attention all art fans! Step into the art of Vincent Van Gogh in Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience located in Montebello, California. You will be walking through multiple rooms which include: A VR Experience, the immersive experience itself with projections of his most compelling works, and even be able to put your own paintings on display.
Produced by Exhibition Hub and Fever, two giants of immersive entertainment and family-friendly experiences, Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience has swept the world in the past two years, drawing over 5 million visitors into Van Gogh’s orbit while making his art more accessible through their ground-breaking approach.
Executive Producer of the experience, John Zaller, has nearly 25 years of experience and a diversified background in the Museum, Entertainment, and Attraction industries. John has overseen and helped develop more than 40 Immersive Experiences during his career. Such experiences include Jurassic World: The Exhibition, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, Star Trek: The Exhibition, and plenty more.
I had the wonderful opportunity to interview John about the Van Gogh Experience.
- Q) We now live in an era where people are prioritizing their mental health more, and we all know that Van Gogh struggled with mental health, thus creating his masterpieces. Was that your goal for this experience, to have the visitors think about mental health?
- J) Well, when you talk about the subject of Vincent Van Gogh, you can’t do it without talking about mental health. So, throughout the experience, we share information about his life and his struggles with mental health, and we try to treat it in a way that lets people think about the fact that Van Gogh had epilepsy, he was an alcoholic, he was bipolar, he may have had border line personality disorder, this was all diagnosed after his death, and there were no tools at that time. There was no awareness to treat him. He died at the age of 37 from suicide. Just picture what the art world would look like if he had lived to be as old as Claude Monet who lived to be 86 years old. So that is something that we do treat. The kind of Zen like effect that we create is intentional because we want to create an environment where you really do feel that sense of being transported into his world, through this kind of magical portal that places you inside of his works. And the process of creating art in and of itself does have the sense of calm to it, so we wanted to convey this sense of calmness of artistic creation through the works.
- Q) Has anyone come out of the experience crying or feeling deep emotions?
- J) I mean I have talked to a lot of visitors who have been in tears, tears of joy, emotional tears. Van Gogh has got a great quote in the VR where he says, “Those small emotions, be aware of them because they control our life,” and you really see that release here because his art is so incredible, so beautiful. There are over 400 paintings featured here that speak to each of us differently and so I’ve seen those strong emotional reactions. I’ve also spoken with several veterans who have PTSD who have told me that this is the first place they’ve felt calm in public since they became aware of their condition.
- Q) Is there a painting of Van Gogh that speaks to you the most?
- J) I have a few favorites. Starry Night, obviously. It is so iconic, but it’s so iconic for a reason. He showed us what motion looked like in a still painting. You see the motion of the universe that you couldn’t fully understand yet, be described in that painting. Another thing that’s amazing about that painting is it also reflect his state of mind and his desire to seek the light. So, it speaks to me in a lot of different ways. Several of his flower paintings are my favorites, especially the almond blossom series because it is such a vibrant, rich saturation of color. And then probably my favorite is his sunflowers paintings, for a couple reasons. We had one of the sunflower paintings in our kitchen growing up when I was a kid, so it brings back all these great memories of childhood. The fact that he painted 11 of those and he used over 30 different shades of yellow trying to find brightness and happiness is great testament to him as an artist and him as a person.
As an Executive Producer, what was the most difficult or challenging aspect of making this come to be?
The sheer coordination of the overall process. It took us two years to make the show, and then we had 40 people here building the show, 15 trucks that are bringing the show in. Just the overall logistics are what a lot of people would consider a challenge. But it excites me to have those opportunities to create something this beautiful. And we have created the show from all different types of learning styles. You have imagery, digital technology, audio elements. The soundtrack is a custom soundtrack and the quotes that are read by the voice actor are quotes from Van Gogh’s letters to his brother, Theo, about his process of creating his art. So, we use those in certain areas to emphasize the importance of the subject.
You have created multiple immersive experiences such as Titanic, and Dino World, and now Van Gogh. Do you have in mind of any other artist, show or movie, that you would like to make into an immersive experience?
We are working on quite a few Immersive experiences. We are also working on blending that digital immersive world with the physical world, and I think that Is where immersive experiences are going. Because now you have a lot of places that say they are immersive experience, and it is just screens with projectors, and even when you look around this experience, there is so much to being immersed than just digital technology. So that is where we are focusing on as we develop these new projects.
About:
This captivating experience, a previous winner of USA Today’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Award, is brought to you by the organizers of a collection of widely successful exhibitions present in cities across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
The exhibition has been touring since 2017 and has been awarded the best Immersive Experience in 2021 by USA Today, as well as ranking among the 12 best immersive experiences in the world by CNN.
Location: 1345 N Montebello Blvd. Montebello, CA 90640
Availability: The experience opens to the public on Friday, July 14 and is currently slated to run through September 2023.
- Weekdays: 10am–8pm (Closed on Tuesdays)
- Weekends & Holidays: 9am–9pm
Tickets: Tickets (which can be purchased online) start at $17.90 for children and $29.90 for adults. Special prices are also available for seniors (65+), students (13 to 26) and those with disabilities. Limited VIP tickets that include the VR experience are available starting at $49.90 for adults and $37.90 for children. Group bundles are also available.”