When Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience reopened at the Exhibition Hub Art Center on May twenty-eighth, it wasn’t just a return — it was a reinvention. The show, which first toured Cincinnati to strong crowds before moving on, came back upgraded with new rooms, new technology, and a storytelling approach that goes well beyond wall-to-wall projections. For a city that has embraced immersive art, this is the most complete version yet.

The experience begins the way a traditional exhibition might — a museum-style walk-through covering Van Gogh’s life, from his early struggles to his years in Arles and Saint-Rémy. But then the galleries open up into something else entirely. Three hundred sixty-degree digital projections wrap around visitors, filling the space with swirling skies from The Starry Night, golden wheat fields, and the deep blues of his cypress trees. The effect is less like looking at paintings and more like standing inside them.

This Cincinnati run introduces spaces the city hasn’t seen before. The Infinite Sunflower Room surrounds guests with mirrored blooms in rich golden hues — a landscape you can walk through rather than observe. The Letters Room offers a chance to “meet” Van Gogh through a life-size hologram projection that appears to converse with visitors, drawing on the artist’s actual correspondence. There’s also an opportunity to write a letter to Van Gogh yourself, reflecting on what his work means in today’s world.

Technology plays a central role throughout. Two virtual reality experiences are available: a new narrative walking VR that lets guests physically move through Van Gogh’s world, and a seated VR journey called “A Day in the Life of the Artist in Arles, France,” which travels through eight iconic works and the inspirations behind them. Interactive kiosks let visitors explore how Van Gogh painted the same subjects differently across his career and vote for the versions that move them most. The five-dollar VR upgrade comes highly recommended by attendees.

The production is by Exhibition Hub, the company behind large-scale exhibitions seen by more than five million people worldwide since twenty seventeen, including runs in New York, Atlanta, Washington, and Boston. USA Today named it the best immersive experience of twenty twenty-one, and CNN ranked it among the twelve best in the world. In Cincinnati alone, it’s drawn a four point eight rating from nearly four hundred reviews.

Practical details matter if you’re planning a visit. General admission runs from twenty-nine ninety to thirty-eight ninety, with VIP packages from forty-three ninety to fifty-two ninety including the VR experience and a souvenir. Children under four get in free. Sessions run Monday, Wednesday through Sunday, nine thirty in the morning to six thirty at night, with Friday and Saturday extending to seven thirty. The venue is closed Tuesdays. Plan for forty-five to seventy-five minutes, though many visitors take closer to ninety. The Exhibition Hub Art Center at eighteen West Fourth Street is wheelchair and stroller accessible, and all ages are welcome, with children under seventeen requiring an adult.

The timing of the reopening was deliberate — it landed just ahead of the anniversary of The Starry Night, which Van Gogh painted in June of eighteen eighty-nine while at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. That painting, more than any other, defined the swirling, luminous style the entire exhibition celebrates.

For Cincinnatians, the show offers something the art museum can’t: the chance to physically enter an artist’s vision rather than stand at a respectful distance. Whether you’re a lifelong Van Gogh admirer or encountering him for the first time, the blend of biography, projection, and interaction makes a case that technology and traditional art don’t have to compete — they can complete each other.

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is at the Exhibition Hub Art Center, eighteen West Fourth Street, downtown. Tickets are available through the Fever app or website. The Nancy Rexroth photography retrospective at the Cincinnati Art Museum runs through January third if you want to pair the digital with the analog.