Inside the cavernous space of THE LUME Indianapolis, the surreal becomes the sublime.
Melting clocks flow off of blank walls-turned-projection screens. Creatures lumber across alien worlds. Landscapes twist and warp before your eyes. Flowers and stars and butterflies float in ethereal movements.
The images are beautiful, whimsical, haunting and stomach-churning — sometimes all at once.
The absurd, adventurous and amazing artwork of Salvador Dalí comes to life inside the newest iteration of THE LUME Indianapolis at Newfields. “Dalí Alive” is a multisensory, immersive look at the Spanish artist’s paintings, projected throughout the galleries from 150 floor-to-ceiling projectors.
“A lot of folks are sometimes intimidated coming into a museum. They’re curious about art, but they don’t really know what to look at or maybe don’t know the artist’s name,” said Jonathan Berger, vice president of marketing and external affairs at Newfields. “THE LUME is a way to demystify art for a lot of people. You can enjoy the fully immersive space, enjoy a glass of wine or one of the food items, and just kind of wander through the space.”
Curated music, scent cues, food and drinks help visitors gain a better understanding of the artist, his work and his larger-than-life personality.
To close out the exhibition, guests will gaze upon four Dalí paintings — part of the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s collection that have not been on display since 1979.
“For 45 years, these paintings haven’t been seen,” Berger said. “So for a lot of people, this is the first time they’ll have seen them. It’s exciting to pair the digital “Dalí Alive” with these significant works of art. They’re kind of a hidden treasure.”
THE LUME is the result of an ambitious multi-year effort by Newfields to offer a one-of-a-kind experience at the museum. Newfields officials worked with Grande Experience, an Australian company specializing in immersive art and large-scale exhibitions. Over five years, Newfields has researched innovative digital exhibitions in Asia, Australia and Europe, gauging how those museums created immersive exhibitions and how the concept could be brought to Indianapolis.
The research demonstrated how digital projection technology and celebrated works of art can be joined to appeal to new audiences. The fourth floor of the Indianapolis Museum of Art was completely reimagined to support this vision. In massive galleries, high-definition projectors display a rotating collection of images and artwork.
Since debuting in 2021, Newfields has featured versions of THE LUME looking at Van Gogh, Monet and other Impressionist painters.
“Dalí Alive” offers an entirely different experience.
“He was so different than Van Gogh or Monet,” Berger said. “You might not know Dalí by name, but you’ve seen the melting clock and some of those elements. So it’s a chance to introduce people to art in a different way.”
Dalí was a Spanish Surrealist painter, writer, sculptor, filmmaker, designer and showman known for his wild, larger-than-life dreamscapes filled with bizarre items such as melting clocks, stretched figures and fascinating dreamlike creatures. Dalí was born in Catalonia, Spain and received his education in fine arts in Madrid.
Much of Dalí’s artwork and legacy was influenced by Impressionist and Renaissance masters that came before him. By the late 1920s, he was moving closer to Surrealism and joined a Surrealist group in 1929.
Some of Dalí’s most famous artworks include “The Persistence of Memory” and “Swans Reflecting Elephants.”
Grande Experience and The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, developed the “Dalí Alive” experience. In it, visitors are taking through the artist’s life, from his formative years in Spain to his work in Surrealist circles in Paris to his time in the United States taking the country by storm.
Newfields officials took two months to reconfigure THE LUME gallery space to fit Dalí’s personality and art.
“Bringing this to life was a process,” Berger said.
The exhibition tells the story of Dalí’s life and work, intersperesed with quotations from the artist revealing his steadfast ego and oversized confidence. Visuals projected across THE LUME’s space captivate, as classical and guitar music fills the air and fragrances recall the Spanish countryside and Parisian cafes.
Visitors can stop into new café concept, El Mercado Surreal, to munch on a selection of Spanish-inspired small bites by Newfields’ culinary team. Mixologists have created Dalí-esque cocktails, and beer and wine is available to purchase.
“The idea was a Spanish-style street market, and that cross between sit-down small-plate tapas type things as well as retail items you can take home, too,” said Patrick Russ, Newfields chef.
A reimagined interactive activity space called Let’s Get Surreal offers engaging activities such as 3-D photo booths based on Dalí’s most well-known works, and an artificial intelligence game transforming written word into a two-dimensional masterpiece.
“LUME is alreaady a really amazing, immersive experience. But having these activities provides guests with anothe way in, another way to make a connection with the artwork,” said Maggie Ordon, interpretation planner for Newfields.
But arguably the most exciting aspect of “Dalí Alive” are the four original Dalí watercolor paintings, created for the set of the 1961-62 production of the opera “The Spanish Lady and the Roman Cavalier.” The watercolors belonged to the opera’s producer Lorenzo Alvary and his wife Hallie.
About a decade after the opera closed, the couple returned Hallie’s home state of Indiana, and the couple donated the works to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the mid-1970s.
Dalí initially created five watercolors to act as backdrops for the opera, but the fifth one has been lost to time.
“We like to use things from our collection whenever we can, to have that physical, in-person art. So we were able to pull these four watercolors from our permanent collection,” said Anna Stein, assistant curator of works on paper at Newfields.
“Dalí Alive” at THE LUME Indianapolis opened to the public in the IMA Galleries on March 3 and will be display through the rest of the year. Tickets are on sale now.
IF YOU GO
“Dalí Alive”
What: The latest iteration of THE LUME Indianapolis, featuring an immersive look into the paintings and life of Salvador Dalí.
Where: Newfields, 4000 Michigan Ave., Indianapolis
When: Through the end of 2024
Information: discovernewfields.org
