The van Gogh traveling Exhibit

Vincent van Gogh memorial on grounds of the hospital in Arles, France

Next to the last room at the exhibit with large murals projected

My blog is supposed to have articles on wine, travel, and food, and of course, most of them have been primarily on wine. But I now can give you a report on travel as I just returned from seeing the van Gogh traveling exhibit in Atlanta, Georgia. It is my understanding that it's going to Orlando Florida next. It is to be sure a unique experience and it is very educational and if you are not that familiar with van Gogh’s history the exhibit is a good venue to become better informed regarding van Gogh’s life and work. You don't see any original paintings but there are excellent reproductions, many of them oversized, and many of them demonstrating multiple artist proofs which are sort of test runs by the artist prior to producing the final work. The best example at this exhibition was his still life of sunflowers. It turns out he did multiple paintings of sunflowers before finishing the work we all are familiar with and the exhibition shows you all of them. At the end of the exhibit, you go into an extremely large room where they project his paintings on three walls and the ceiling and add aspects of his paintings to the demonstration. You basically become immersed in the paintings. My children did the virtual reality exhibition which basically is you wear a virtual reality headset and you walk around the yellow room that he stayed in at the end of his life. The exhibit also has a full-size mock-up of his bedroom that was in the yellow house. 

The yellow house today in Arles, France

Years ago on a Rhone river cruise, my wife and I visited Arles, France as well as the old hospital, the former Hôtel-Dieu-Saint-Espirit, where van Gogh was admitted. The building is now a cultural center but out front in the entranceway, you can walk around the grounds, and along the way are reproductions of van Gogh’s paintings done there where you see the painting and then look forward and see the scene he was painting. It is amazing how realistic the paintings capture the scene even being an impressionist painting. There are multiple areas like this all over Arle where van Gogh did his paintings.  I highly recommend a visit to Arles to see the scenes van Gogh painted and also visiting this traveling exhibit.