By: Margot Dragos
If you’re tired of viewing a painting in a museum and craving a new way to experience art, head over to Powerhouse Arts in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, for its first virtual reality exhibition. Developed by ACCIONA Cultura, “Masterpieces: A Virtual Experience of the Museo del Prado” brings visitors inside the famous Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, Spain.
The exhibition is “driven by a commitment to make art more accessible,” according to Powerhouse Arts. Featured paintings from renowned artists like Velázquez and Goya are unlikely to ever leave Museo del Prado because of conservation needs and strict loan policies, making the exhibition a rare experience.
“Masterpieces” begins with blank, green walls painted with white outlines of frames for each work of art. Within each frame is a peephole that attendees are invited to peer through, providing a sneak peek into the full immersion to come.
The experience features five iconic paintings from Museo del Prado: “The Sense of Sight” by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel, “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez, “Venus and Adonis” by Paolo Veronese, “Witches’ Sabbath” by Francisco de Goya, and “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” a triptych, or work of art divided into three panels, by Hieronymus Bosch.
After putting on a virtual reality (VR) headset, visitors meet a British guard the night before his retirement. He leads attendees into the storage room of Museo del Prado, showing guests statues and making guests interact with objects like a television and record player. The guard remains with guests throughout the entirety of the exhibit and explains each artist’s process while narrating the symbolism and intricacies of each painting.
“I think the caveat of VR [virtual reality] is very much that if you can look around, then where do you look?” Wendi Yan, 27, Bushwick, told The Vanguard. “[But] this experience did a really good job of guiding you and making you walk around and then touch things here and there.”
“They’re really bringing you on a journey of seeing different aspects of these paintings that might not be as easily or emotionally accessible if you just see the paintings themselves [in a real-life museum].”
A large part of the experience was in Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” It is one of Bosch’s most enigmatic creations and takes guests through the depths of hell to the highest heavens.
Marcella Ghiara, 60, says her favorite part of the exhibit was “when we went up” into the clouds of Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” Her daughter Mia Kelson, 19, says her favorite part was “when we were down below with the fire,” in the nightmarish version of hell portrayed in the right-hand panel of the triptych.
In “Witches’ Sabbath,” Goya’s dark illustrations floated off the walls and around attendees’ heads. Yan noted that Goya was “tormented with his own senses” during his life and “painted a lot of horrors of humanity in his lifetime.” She appreciated how the VR experience also commented on this aspect of Goya’s work.
“I think for the Goya painting, for example, what they really did was immerse you instead of recreating the painting,” Yan said. “[The experience] shows you the context or the environment, both literally and emotionally, that the artist painted the painting out of. […] it’s actually giving you a more emotional backdrop to see the painting itself, which I thought was really cool.”
At the end of the VR experience, guests were invited to participate in a self-guided art-making activity and create a portable diorama of an art gallery inspired by how they envision art galleries of the future. Guests were also guided to this section if they could not participate in the VR experience due to motion sickness or other reasons.
Within this VR exhibition, Powerhouse Arts offers a glimpse into the future of museums by providing a complex analysis of some of the most famous paintings.
“I would say it’s not to be missed,” Ghiara said regarding the exhibition. “It’s extremely beautiful [and] well done.”
“You’re very immersed. And the characters are so beautiful because these people are such good painters. It’s not [just] any virtual reality– It’s an incredible, beautiful virtual reality.”
“Masterpieces” is on display at Powerhouse Arts through Dec. 20. To learn more and purchase tickets, visit https://powerhousearts.org/prado