You can now climb into “Starry Night”
Climb into art history.
As museums across the globe move to ban selfie sticks, one institution is actually courting this ubiquitous, snapping demographic. Recently, in the Philippines (the capital of the maligned medium), the world’s first selfie museum, Art in Island, opened its doors. Built to encourage touching, interacting, and general playfulness, the museum is meant to serve as the antithesis to traditional, irrate museum guards yelling at you to “stand back” from the art.
“Whenever you visit an art museum, you are always expected to just look around quietly,” the museum’s creators lament on its Facebook page. “You don’t even have a single proof of you being there. That’s why, for those who think that ‘art museum is not for me,’ we bring you ART IN ISLAND.”
Below, visitors get up close and selfie with 3D models of iconic paintings like Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” and Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”
As Hyperallergic recently noted: “With portions of each work slightly altered or left out entirely, the art isn’t even finished until you complete the picture.”
A rather cheeky selfie.