Color to Emotion: Van Gogh Exhibit

How the Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit uses color to convey emotion.

During winter break, my family and I decided to go to the Van Gogh Exhibit in Birmingham, AL because it was a limited-edition exhibit. The exhibit was broken up into three sections – his life in quotes, a transition room with patterns, and the finale of projecting his life work onto the walls and floors of a huge projection room.

Despite these different sections, one thing remained constant: the use of bright, illuminate colors. Through our Invisible Cities project, we learned how colors portray meaning in abstract ways, and I was able to apply what we learned in class to the Van Gogh exhibit. I don’t think I would have enjoyed this exhibit without the colorful aura. On the quotes, the colors represented Van Gogh’s mental state during a certain period of his life. Bright colors for the ups; darker, bluer shades for the downs. It connects to our Invisible Cities project in class as the curators of this exhibit had to think about how to incorporate colors to evoke our emotions as visitors, giving us an immersive dive into Van Gogh’s life.