The starry night will have turned black in the space of just two years. The Canadian company behind the immersive experiences of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet and Frida Kahlo, filed for bankruptcy in the US state of Delaware on Friday July 28.
The decision aims to protect the company’s US assets, as insolvency proceedings continue in Ontario, Canada. The owners of Lighthouse Immersive now find themselves in debt to the tune of $16.6 million to one of their Californian partners, reports the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail.
“Lighthouse Immersive Inc. and its affiliates are currently undergoing restructuring in Canada,” company spokesman Nick Harkin told the Los Angeles Times. “This in no way affects the operation of our sites or our current programming. Our goal is to take advantage of this renewal to consolidate our business and continue to offer spectacular exhibitions to the public.”
Founded in 2019 with the ambition of “revolutionizing the encounter between the public and art through an unparalleled immersive experience”, the company is generating enthusiasm as the pandemic emerges. Some even see in this forty-minute animation masterpieces by the Dutch painter, the “future of art” – at 30 euros access. Acclaimed by critics, the exhibition is a success; in the spring of 2022, more than five million visitors – including Madonna – witnessed the projections on the walls of the paintings that seem to come to life in front of them.
But quickly, interest fell, along with health constraints. Already in June, Lighthouse Immersive canceled two immersive Disney exhibitions in Dallas and Atlanta, United States, without giving an explanation.
Two months later, the alarm bell is ringing. The company, based in 21 cities in North America, is expected to reduce a quarter of its workforce.
The recipe has nevertheless been exported to Europe, and still seems to work. Produced by other companies, various installations of this type have been set up around the same artists. In France, the project was thus exported for the first time to the Atelier des Lumières in 2020. This summer, the works of Van Gogh and Yves Klein are again projected there until August 27.
