Earlier this week, I did something I’ve never done before. I went on an overnight trip with my brother who is twelve years younger than me.  I was married and out of the house when he was only six, so there really hasn’t been a lot of opportunities for us to spend much one on one time together. After our other brother passed away earlier this year, we knew we needed to really make an effort to spend more time together. Of the six members of our family, he and I are the only one’s left.

He’s a big planner, so most of what we’ve done together is planned by him, so it wasn’t surprising that he planned the trip to Indianapolis to visit the Lume at the Newfields Museum to view the 30,000 square foot Vincent Van Gogh immersive experience. Their website describes it as:

Nearly 150 state-of-the-art digital projectors transform two-dimensional paintings into a three-dimensional world that guests can explore while walking through 30,000 square feet of immersive galleries. THE LUME Indianapolis has 60 minutes of digital content that runs continuously and simultaneously in all the digital galleries.

This is not a movie with a start and end, or something you would sit to watch from one viewpoint, but rather a constant loop of beauty that is designed to be a walking experience, seeing the art up close and all around you. Guests should wander throughout the space, taking in the experience from every angle.

There was just so much to see. The walls and floors were covered with the images and many of the images were 3D and parts of the paintings floated along the walls and floor.

We watched it one time through and watched it again while we walked from room to room seeing the art from different angles. It was truly like walking into a painting being surrounded by color on all sides.

The Van Gogh exhibit was on the top floor of the museum and the other three floors contained modern art including an exhibit entitled “Private Eye: The Imagist Impulse in Chicago Art. Modern art is generally not my thing, but these were some pretty interesting art pieces.

We ended our evening at Newfields at their Harvest Nights display of hundreds of lighted pumpkins along the tree-lined walk.

The next day we visited the Garfield Park Conservatory also in Indianapolis and enjoyed strolling through the glass conservatory and sunken gardens.

It was an absolutely perfect ending to a very memorable trip. We never ran out of things to talk about and this photo pretty much sums up my feelings about this trip. Maybe next time we’ll even include our husbands.