Much like how death inevitably comes for us all, immersiveness inevitably comes for all art institutions. The latest major gallery to succumb to this particular fate is the National Portrait Gallery, which has just announced a new partnership with immersive art big wigs Frameless.
The plan is to create a touring exhibition based on the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, using ‘the highest quality digital projection, Hollywood-style visual effects and the latest audio technology with music and creative narratives to tell the stories behind some of the Gallery’s best-loved portraits’.
The debut project will be called ‘Stories – Brought to Life’ and will focus on some of the fascinating, important people depicted in paintings at the National Portrait Gallery. It will be premiered in Salford, Greater Manchester, in May 2025, ahead of a national and international tour.
The idea behind it is a laudable one: they want to give more people access to this vital national art collection, taking the work out of the confines of the London gallery and sending it off around the world for everyone to enjoy. Could they have just loaned out some paintings to the nation’s increasingly under-funded, under-resourced, under-visited regional museums instead? Maybe, but the selfies wouldn’t be as good.
'Stories - Brought to Life' will launch in May 2025. More details here.
Want more immersive art? Here, read this history of the genre.
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