IT Blog

In a giant room above a former car dealership in the center of San Francisco, a plethora of huge, brightly colored sunflowers is being laser-projected onto a 27-foot-high wall. Soon, the sunflowers fade into a series of animated swirls, blinking stars, and vivid depictions of the lights of a late-19th-century French village reflected in an undulating river. And then four faces appear—each an upside-down self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh. Standing on a riser about 10 feet above the floor, you feel like you’re deep inside an animated interpretation of one of the famous Dutch artist’s most celebrated paintings, The Starry Night.

That’s exactly the experience the producers of Immersive Van Gogh want to invoke. The traveling exhibition—currently on display in Chicago, opening in San Francisco on March 18, and coming soon to other cities around the country—explores the artist’s final days before he took his own life to escape his…