Van Gogh's Bedrooms
The Art Institute of Chicago
Awards
In 2016, the Art Institute of Chicago brought all three of Van Gogh's Bedroom paintings together for the first time in North America. The exhibition dug into how each painting was made, the conservation effort, and the unique differences between each piece.
I built a kiosk interactive that let visitors explore high-definition images of all three paintings at once and at a higher level of detail than they would be able to see from viewing the paintings on the wall. As the user panned and zoomed to explore, all three would move together to show the same spot at the same zoom. Users could zoom into the chair, the window, or the bed and see exactly how Van Gogh painted that detail differently in each version. Hotspots stayed pinned to those spots as you moved around, highlighting key areas and walking users through what they were looking at.
The museum provided their conservation imagery for alternate views where users could switch to X-ray and raking-light modes which showed details like underdrawing and surface detail that is invisible to the naked eye. It was a look at the research happening behind the paintings.
Having one of my pieces exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in the same room as paintings by Vincent Van Gogh is still one of the highlights of my career today.
Built in Cinder and C++. Created at Bluecadet.
A larger story
One focus piece of the exhibit was a life size recreation of Van Gogh’s bedroom. Visitors could look through the windows and openings into the room to get a look into the bedroom from the same point of Van Gogh himself.