So, last March, I kept seeing ads online for the Van Gogh Immersive Experience and it looked cool, so I got tickets. (Could have gotten them for July or November, but I thought July would be too soon pandemic wise, HAHAHAHA.)

Holy crap, it was amazing. It’s divided into 3 parts, and all of it is great.

The first section is like a traditional museum exhibit – lots of historical information on Van Gogh himself and lots of his paintings. Granted, the paintings are actually projected on the wall in this section, but I don’t think that takes away from anything – I’m not sure you could get his entire Sunflowers series in one place like this. (Yes, I found myself looking for one that said, “For Amy” on it – I couldn’t help it.)

That on its own was lovely – but then you go into the 360º room. Walk in, plop yourself down on the floor (well carpeted) and just…watch the walls. They went through his whole career, all projected on these huge walls, and they animate his paintings (which was SO cool) and all these awesome animated transitions along the way and it was just SO neat and well done. And they have it setup in a way that it doesn’t really matter what wall you’re looking at, you won’t miss anything. Just really well done and super cool.

Then the last bit is a VR experience. I was a little iffy on that, cause other VR type stuff has made me dizzy. But, I did it, and WOW WOW WOW. You get a VR headset (they were scrubbing those suckers down between folks) – and it takes you through the French countryside of the scenes that inspired 7 of his works. That was also SO DAMN COOL. You could look behind you, all around, up, down – they have you sit for it, which is good, though I almost fell off the seat, LOL. And even though the scenes you’re walking through are illustrated, your brain is going, “Yup, this is real” – I caught myself trying to reach down and touch a chicken at one point. VR has come a LONG way, though they need to make those headsets lighter.

Overall, just a really neat exhibit and I’m so glad I got the tickets and it was totally worth driving into DC for it.