#PanoramaRomantica in the Groninger Museum

The Reality Center of the University of Groningen (UG) has designed a special virtual panorama for a forthcoming exhibition entitled Romanticism in the North and a current exhibition entitled Romanticism Today! It is called #PanoramaRomantica. The technology allows visitors to step ‘inside’ a painting.

Panoramic paintings were immense circular or semicircular paintings that made viewers feel as if they were standing in the landscape being depicted. The first panoramic paintings appeared in Great Britain towards the end of the eighteenth century. During the nineteenth century (the Romantic era), they became very popular throughout Europe and the United States. The Panorama Mesdag by the Groningen painter Mesdag on display in The Hague is one of the most famous examples.

Travelling through a virtual panorama

The Groninger Museum commissioned the Reality Center of the UG to design a Virtual Reality panorama based on a number of famous landscape paintings. In the modern panorama room of the Groninger Museum, visitors make a virtual journey through six different landscapes, from serene meadows to imposing mountains and quiet moonlit nights. For 8 minutes, you are transported into the imaginary world of the paintings. The journey is over before you know it, but you will have spent fifty times longer looking at the virtual panorama paintings than the average visitor spends looking at paintings hanging on the wall. #PanoramaRomantica is open until April 2018.

The Reality Center in the UG's Center for Information Technology (CIT) has an arsenal of unique, highly advanced Virtual Reality (VR) facilities, which are used for innovative research in a whole range of disciplines. The Virtual Reality experts guarantee outstanding expertise and support for researchers and academics. In addition to commissions from the UG, the Reality Center also carries out commercial projects for non-university organizations.

About the exhibitions

Romanticism Today! (until 2 April 2018)
Fans of contemporary romanticism, fantasy and illusion won’t want to miss this exhibition. The artificial reality landscape puts you right in the middle of nature, with landscapes that vary from picturesque to menacing and mysterious. A surprising selection from the Groninger Museum’s own collection of modern art, fashion and design takes you on a thrilling journey from Studio Job’s Black Romanticism to the pure white collections compiled by fashion designers Viktor & Rolf. Let your imagination run wild amid a dark soundscape by Richard Bolhuis or a relaxing soundscape by Alameda.

Romanticism in the North – from Friedrich to Turner (9 December 2017 to 6 May 2018)
The Groninger Museum presents Romanticism in the North – from Friedrich to Turner , the first international overview of landscape paintings from the Romantic era (1800-1850) in Northern Europe. Dramatic scenes of raging seas, imposing mountains and erupting volcanoes alternate with quiet moonlit nights and serene meadows where lonely figures pause to rest. Prepare to be amazed by over 95 magnificent works from the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia and Great Britain. Landscape painting blossomed during the Romantic era, thanks to artists such as J.M.W. Turner in England, Caspar David Friedrich in Germany and Johan Christian Dahl in Norway. Their paintings not only appealed to the imagination, they also gave rise to new ideas about art, which influenced modern art in general. It was no longer enough for painters to look at the world around them; they began to turn their gaze inwards. The landscapes they painted are as varied and changeable as the human state of mind. This exhibition presents Romanticism in an international context for the very first time, and shows how important Dutch painters such as Koekkoek, Nuijen and Schelfhout compare with their famous foreign counterparts.