The Taubman Museum of Art has pulled off a first-of-its-kind feat. Its newest exhibition, “Eternally New: The Art Nouveau World of Alphonse Mucha” combines original artwork, historic artifacts, and visual, auditory, and olfactory elements in a specially ticketed hybrid exhibition to present the work of groundbreaking Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha in a completely new way.
Imagine those planetariums that used to visit our elementary schools, but way bigger, way cooler, and way more breathtaking.
Opening on Thursday, this immersive experience has not been on display outside of Europe. The Taubman is partnering with the Grand Palais Immersif to debut this immersive experience about Mucha’s artwork and life in North America.
“Imagination draws people in in different ways,” said Cindy Peterson, Taubman Museum of Art executive director and exhibition curator.
“These immersive exhibitions are really opening art to new crowds,” said Laurent Dondey, the Grand Palais Immersif’s head of business development and international touring for exhibitions, who traveled to Roanoke for the Taubman’s opening celebration last weekend.
The Taubman experience includes additional immersive elements that European visitors have not seen — nearly 50 pieces of Mucha’s original artwork on loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, with additional period pieces from other regional collections.
Party like it’s 1899
The Taubman celebrated the exhibition’s opening with two events that drew nearly 1,100 people: a public party on Saturday night and a members-only event on Sunday. Attendees traveled from nearby cities including Virginia Beach and Washington, D.C.
“This is a big event for the Taubman. The Taubman is the shining star for the city,” said John P. Fishwick, Jr., Taubman Museum of Art board chair.
“Anytime you’re a first, it’s a good thing. We want to have not just a regional and a statewide reputation, but we want to have a national reputation as well,” Fishwick said.
His favorite part of the exhibition? Standing back and noticing the crowd’s excitement.
“It was just seeing all the different people there and how excited the people were, all their energy,” Fishwick said. “It kind of blows you away to see the immersive stuff.”
Anna Baker and partner Charles Mann from Lynchburg purchased tickets as soon as they learned of Saturday’s event.
Like other women in attendance, Baker styled herself as one of Mucha’s illustrations; Autumn, she said. She wore a floral headpiece in a burnt orange and ivory aesthetic. She had just pulled her attire together the night before, she said, smiling.
Mann has been a fan of Mucha’s for as long as he can remember.
“I didn’t know what Art Nouveau was until I started looking at what it was,” Mann said.
He was first drawn to cartoon-style drawings, then commercial art. When he started studying artwork more closely, he was wowed, he said.
“I thought it was pretty awesome, and then I just fell in love with it,” Mann said.
Mann and Baker haven’t found many Mucha exhibitions in the U.S. over the years, they said. They went to one in Charlotte, and they were aware of collections in Chicago and Richmond.
They took a trip to Prague — Mucha’s birthplace — to see the artist’s work.
Entrée into Art Nouveau: a tour of the Mucha experience
At the exhibition’s entrance, a six-foot tall, scene-setting black-and-white photograph pulls the visitor in, an 1898 Parisian streetscape — slanted rooflines, one building speckled with a bevy of ads, including a Mucha advertisement on the foremost building’s stone corner. Look closely; all the visual lines in this scene beckon visitors to the right.
The ad for the Waverly Bicycle company is famous for depicting only the forward-most part of the bike and its handlebars. Instead of highlighting his client, Mucha’s subject is a woman deep in thought, hand to chin. Ribbons wrap around her shoulders, her gown drapes across the frame. She holds a laurel bouquet, a symbol of Waverly’s success.
The exhibition begins.
To the right, a 1925 Amilcar stands in front of the museum’s glass windows. The car was considered a poor man’s Bugatti, Peterson said. Its luxuriously curving wooden body still shines with a glossy mahogany veneer, and its silk-embroidered linen bench is well-suited for a regal driver. The space has been designed as a photo op.
The next gallery displays a colorful timeline of local, regional and national events that occurred during Mucha’s lifetime, beginning with 1860 — his birth in Moravia (present-day Czech Republic) — and continuing through 1939.
The museum’s graphic designer worked with Petersen to create the timeline’s palette, according to Sunny Nelson, the Taubman’s deputy director of marketing and public relations. The colors here have been inspired by the muted peaches, taupes, lavenders, ochres, blues and greens commonly seen in Art Nouveau.
A video message from Mucha’s great-grandson and a video of Mucha reflecting on the duties of a citizen living in Czechoslovakia allow visitors to be welcomed by Mucha’s family and then to hear from Mucha himself. Mucha appears on a curtained stage in a black and white hologram, in a swirling tornado of pixels, forming and reforming into different forms of the same man… working, relaxing, lecturing.
A scentbox completes this gallery: the sweet pea, rose, primroses, violets and daisies of Mucha’s childhood waft into your nose, if invited, mimicking a wildflower bouquet. The scent is delicate, meant to transport visitors to the easy days Mucha spent in his childhood church.
A life writ large
The next immersive is in a square room, a white cube, twelve feet tall. There plays a visual display of Mucha’s journals and sketches, enlarged. An old photo of an unknown woman scrolls vertically up the wall, almost as large as the wall is tall. A pencil sketch follows, similar, with added flowers, swirls, a crown upon her hair. A flowing dress, a swoop of lace or a train or a ribbon wrapped around her tricep. Delicate. Audio is playing, but not music. Visitors can hear the scratching of a pencil, see its marks upon the wall, upon the wall that has turned into a page. Then a scrap of paper, a square or a rectangle filled with color. The sketch has turned into an ad, the scratch-scratch becomes the tap-tap-tap of a paintbrush upon a tin cup or bucket; the artist is hard at work.
The ticker-tape-images roll on. The subjects briefly come alive, in a few of the scenes, particularly in the “Slav Epic” scenes, Mucha’s masterpieces, his murals, depicting a hard life for his countrymen. You hear their voices, the shouts of the crowd, for a split-second, so short — and then the journals start again.
Another scent-box hangs on the wall here. Take a sniff. Smell the work-room, the artist’s studio. Breathe in the smell of the wooden floor, the shavings, the pencil lead. Mucha, perhaps, is burning incense. Imagine you are there, in the studio, with him. Is it the one Mucha shared with Gaugin?
This immersion demonstrates Mucha’s process from idea to photo to sketch to illustration. But then what?
An illustration must be turned into a lithograph as part of the process of printing the poster. The Taubman has added a video display on the wall in this immersive room to show how that happens. This part of the exhibition is from Scotland, Petersen said.
When visitors leave this room, they are met with the finished product. The first exhibits show Mucha’s work on the pages of a book, hanging on a banner — called a kakemono — and expressed through costume.
The first kakemono in the exhibition depicts JOB, a cigarette paper ad that exemplifies Mucha’s style of characterizing women with elaborately abundant swirls of hair. Below, the visitor sees Mucha’s original.
She’s breathtaking. Her hair dances over her shoulders as smoke rises above her. Mucha paid attention to her cheekbones, her knuckles, the folds of her dress. JOB is spelled out in teal, the same teal as the walls behind her exhibit.
The print is displayed in the pages of “Les Maîtres de l’Affiche,” or “Masters of the Poster,” a large, original book on loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. This is the sort of book that would need its own table, should any one of us be allowed to lay it open and flip through its pages. It’s that big. Each page holds a similar Art Nouveau image. The books, though, are delicate and rare.
These works have been scaled down to fit the page. Since so much of his art was for the public, displayed as posters, it didn’t hold up well to the elements. But these books did.
Several volumes are on loan to the Taubman’s exhibition.
The VMFA has also loaned the Taubman a copy of Mucha’s “La Pater,” his 1899 illustrated edition of The Lord’s Prayer. The book is on display; the pages have been scanned and can be viewed in vivid color on a nearby digital display.
Twenty-two kakemonos are scattered about the space. They are on loan from the Grand Palais Immersif, where 80 of the banners hang together in the Grand Hall. Petersen arranged for the loan while on a trip to Paris.
“I took the train there … and selected the ones most relevant for our space,” she said.
The Sarah Bernhardt effect
The exhibits combine to tell Mucha’s story in multiple parts: they highlight Mucha’s most famous model Sarah Bernhardt, and they showcase the homage latter artists have paid to the originator of Art Nouveau.
In one corner of the gallery, visitors see floral prints creeping through Mucha’s artwork, which lines the gallery wall. Other artists’ work hangs there, too. The museum has included notable examples of Art Nouveau to broaden the visitor experience.
Period dresses and a large penny-farthing bicycle fill the space to set the scene. These were borrowed from regional collections including the Roanoke History Museum and Bustle.
“It’s the whole picture within that space,” Petersen said.
Other elements are present here: coloring spaces, digital poster-making stations and educational tools. Magnifying glasses hang to examine jewelry, while photographs of the same jewelry enlarged to magnificent portions hang nearby. Luminous Tiffany glassware, on loan from a local collector, is on display, further enhancing the fashionable aesthetic.
Following the kakemonos, visitors pass through a gallery divided in intimate fourths and down a narrow hallway to listen to artists speak of Mucha’s influence on their own work.
Much of Mucha’s work was printed in large form.
“They were huge. They were the billboards of their day,” said Mary LaGue, Taubman Museum of Art registrar.
The illustrations could be scaled up or scaled down. They could be as much as seven feet tall and pasted to buildings. Once Mucha’s work became popular, his admirers often peeled his work off the walls and took it home for their own collections, much like people often do with art stickers in the present day. That’s how the publication called “Les Maîtres de l’Affiche,” or “Masters of the Poster” gained in importance, according to LaGue.
Much of the work in the collection came from Mucha’s portfolios, which were often merely titled by a number and labeled by portfolio. It hangs on the wall in simple black frames.
Scattered about, visitors will see complementary work from other Art Nouveau artists. Petersen and her team chose pieces that help tell a story. If each exhibit seems to have been precisely placed, that’s because it was.
For example, standing behind the penny-farthing bicycle in the exhibition’s largest gallery, a pale pink room, you may notice a line of five graphic Muchas hung in a horizontal line at eye-height along one wall. The display is floral, each one featuring a repetitive pattern of delicate blooms. Vines and leaves intertwine across each print. The colors appear muted, but natural, like a garden’s hues when the light has just begun to fade away.
To the exhibits’ left hangs a seven-foot-tall Loie Fuller print of a red-headed woman, the print’s colors washing from deep sunflower yellow to vivid cobalt blue. To the right towers Henri Gabriel Ibels’ 1892 Horloge/ J.Mévisto seven-foot poster of a clown. Bright teal washes into bold yellow against the clown’s black and white costume, a visual opposite to the Fuller anchoring the other end of the line.
These same bold colors are repeated in unexpected pops of brilliance in the multicolored Tiffany Favrile glass that is displayed on just a few walls.
‘The curator is paying attention’
As a creative being, Petersen has an eye for fine detail. She comes alive when she talks about color, form and the way a visitor moves through the museum’s newest exhibition. She helped design the gallery, from the paint color to the location of many of the exhibits.
Petersen can immerse you in a space just as well as any theme park designer. You just have to pause and let your eyes wander. This exhibition is not one to rush through.
There’s this teal conch shell-shaped Tiffany lamp that stands on a wooden music cabinet. Let your eyes drift to the left of the table. The lamp’s black lead lines and teal hue are repeated in the stained window lines seen in a kakemono hanging directly opposite the first tableaux. That kakemono represents a Riot Games video game scene — a reminder that Mucha’s influence can be found in the most unexpected places.
That same teal green is picked up again in the previously mentioned set of five graphic floral illustrations hanging in a line far across the room, and the darker teal shade of the nearby entrance walls complement the same teal throughout the exhibition.
The peach envelopes the visitor in the same way. The two colors are off-set by a barely-there blue-gray.
“When you look at the detail in any exhibition, you know the curator is paying attention,” Petersen said.
Petersen pointed to the middle illustration in that same graphic row of five pieces of Mucha’s art. There is so much to see here, but the eye is continually drawn to the way that first, severe line plays off the opening of the gallery. Looking around the gallery, the other illustrations are divided the same. Groupings of two, of four, of five, of six. Simple frames, muted colors. Chosen for the same theme, the same subject. Place so as to move the visitor through, slowly, gracefully.
That middle illustration, the one Petersen points out, is simply titled, “Plate 28 from Documents Decoratifs Portfolio,” like all the others that came from the Mucha portfolio. Of Mucha’s illustrations, Petersen says this is her favorite.
“Plate 28” is a rug design, Nelson said.
The notebook-size illustration is rectangular in form. Peach and orange five-petaled flowers ring the rug on a tan background, a true tan. Inside the first rectangle, another, where maple leaves are scattered, a shade lighter; they are pink and peach there. The pink matches Petersen’s walls. Inside that rectangle, Mucha drew a circle, filled it with yellow and gold flowers. In the middle, he planted a sea of blue waves, and filled it with an outward fan of green palm leaves.
The rug belongs in Miami, but not quite. Savannah, but not quite. Not Philly or New York. It is an opulent rug, a sumptuous rug, a Parisian rug, An illustration of a rug.
The Taubman placed an enlarged reproduction of that rug under one of its cases, repeating that magnificent pattern throughout its pink gallery. The image has been printed on a vinyl mat, surely as large as a living room’s rug, and placed underneath the case holding one of the rarest exhibits in the Mucha exhibition.
That rug, Petersen says, “accentuates the spectacular” exhibit above it.
The gilded lady
“La Nature,” Mucha’s hyper-realistic sculpture, shines in brass, silver gilding and marble.
This exquisite woman is placed on a pedestal, with long brass flowing locks. She wears a tiara upon her head, crowned with an egg-shaped stone. That sculpture is one of only seven known to exist, and the only one of its kind in the U.S. Every statue is different; some wear earrings, some have different gemstones in their crown.
Petersen points to the gallery walls. They are a soft peach, the same color that appears time and time again in Mucha’s artwork. The walls contrast nicely with the burgundy millinery hanging on a nearby wall and with a navy dress standing in the middle of the gallery.
The color casts a warm hue over the room, much like the warmth that emanates from the Art Nouveau aesthetic, from the lavish jewelry to the Tiffany glass and the high fashion — the Belle Époque, the aura of opulence, of the time.
“This was a special mix, this kind of peach color, and then the copper weather green in the other space,” Petersen said. “I couldn’t sleep for a couple days because you don’t know until it’s done,” she added.
You don’t know if everything is going to be just right until it is done. She and her team had to make last-minute changes, move things around, and make slight shifts in other artifacts. She swapped kakemonos, particularly in the vertical line that draws guests through the largest of the four gallery spaces.
When designing the kakemono trail, Petersen began with a banner that featured a close-up image of a woman in profile, framed by Mucha’s signature swirled halo. Next to that hangs an illustration inspired by the first banner, which is designed by The Singh Twins and portrays a warrior.
There is a video in the next gallery that explains the artists’ inspiration, Nelson said. The Singh Twins are there, discussing their art. Many of the other artists are there, too. The educational component is evident, tracing Mucha’s work to the present.
And so on the kakemonos go, working a path across this gallery to the next, vertical stepping stones of muted colors, swirling patterns, and impressive halos. Iconic images that are curated to pull the visitor through the space, ending eventually with JOB and a banner inspired by JOB, images repeated in a set of three. As this gallery’s journey began, so will it end.
And then, guests pass under one last set of kakemonos, take an unassuming turn into a cavernous room, hues-muted, and enter the final immersion.
Flower power
Colors and music fill the 40-by-18-foot towering gallery with ever-changing scenery. These scenes sometimes repeat earlier exhibits — they are in the original artwork on the gallery walls, in the journal drawings, and on the kakemonos. Now they are set to acoustic music, presented as a part of Mucha’s history.
Visitors spill onto seating arrangements: low stools, couches and chairs are scattered across the floor. Some sit with backs against a wall or stand. Guests are invited to enjoy the room as they see fit. Recline far away, or scoot further in, becoming a part of the projection.
Enormous flowers, vines and drawings of ethereal women in ads that perhaps have already been seen, in aesthetics that are surely already familiar appear one after another. It is mesmerizing.
“In the immersive, you see a number of posters that you had just seen in person — the actual original works of art. That’s when it becomes meaningful,” Petersen said.
Visitors also witness scenes from Mucha’s most meaningful work, the Slav Epic. These murals, painted towards the end of his career, are projected onto the large screen. Like Mucha’s other pieces, this is not the only time the exhibition has addressed Mucha’s epic creation. There are at least two other exhibits here.
Yet, bringing the images into the immersive, drawing the visitor into the story, creates a different sort of reaction. There is a stillness in the room on Saturday evening.
When the show is over, visitors are invited to circle back to the left, to begin their Art Nouveau journey once again.
“And that’s what we saw happen. They went back to the “Gismonda” and they saw it and …,” Petersen said, trailing off, mimicking the visitors’ gasps when they returned to the original 1894 lithograph — the Sarah Bernhardt poster that became the cornerstone of Mucha’s career.
The work, when first displayed at the turn-of-the-century, was nearly life-sized, at seven feet in length and about two feet wide. At the Taubman, the illustration is featured in a copy of “Les Maîtres de l’Affiche,” or “Masters of the Poster,” situated very close to the doorway to the large immersive.
Bernhardt stands in profile, wearing an orchid headpiece and elegant gold and baby blue gown in the illustration. She holds a palm frond in one hand.
Mucha’s aesthetic is evident — his colors are muted, though not pastel. He has positioned Bernhardt against a peach background. The gold shawl of her dress draws a sharp contrast between that and her light blue gown. Bernhardt’s red hair is evident, as is her last name. The latter is ensconced in Mucha’s signature halo.
A mannequin stands next to the case, wearing a bright blue gown, decorated from top to bottom with a beautiful silver pattern. The hem splashes across the floor like a mermaid’s tail. A golden topper adorns the mannequin’s shoulders, falling to her calves in finely decorated waves. The texture is that of hammered metal. Her headpiece — orchids. This is a reproduction of Bernhardt’s dress. It was used to film the immersive.
Across the way, visitors can sit to watch more of Bernhardt’s story; she has not been neglected.
Postscript to a tour: The making of the exhibit
“Eternally New: The Art Nouveau World of Alphonse Mucha” grew out of 2022’s “Titian to Monet: European Paintings from Joslyn Art Museum” special exhibition, also curated by Petersen.
Serendipity? No. Perseverance.
Petersen and her team began to bring this vision together a mere eighteen months ago.
In 2023, Petersen presented her hybrid exhibition model at the American Alliance of Museums Conference in Denver. There, she shared the success of the Taubman’s Titian to Monet exhibition, which had combined art exhibits with immersive elements designed and created as a result of a joint collaboration between the Taubman, Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creative Arts and Technology and Roanoke College.
David Galligan, a representative of The Grand Palais Immersif, attended her presentation, Dondey said. Galligan was impressed, left a business card with Petersen, and the ball started rolling.
Not long after, she was in Europe visiting family.
“I took the train two hours to Paris and I saw the Mucha [immersive].”
For Roanoke, she knew that if an immersive came as a traveling exhibit, Mucha had to be the one — it had the large immersive, and the three smaller immersive components, too. Mucha was the Father of Art Nouveau; that carried significance.
She was in Paris. She was at the Grand Palais. She saw the Mucha immersive — all of it. Still, for a curator with a passion for hybrid exhibitions, she knew she needed more.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is great, but it doesn’t tell the complete story,’” Peterson said. “It [didn’t] have the actual artwork, right? You [couldn’t] go and see the Sarah Bernhardts.”
“In the same way, if you took away all of the immersive parts and had the audience come in, it still would be a rich experience, but not at the level it is now where you have all the combinations,” Petersen said. She was determined to bring the components together.
Luck made it happen, jokes Dondey on the phone. In 2023, he visited the U.S. on a fact-finding tour to identify museums that might be well-suited to host The Grand Palais Immersif’s immersive exhibitions.
The Grand Palais Immersif, an affiliate of digital experience producer Réunion des Musées Nationaux, offers six immersive experiences; as the company’s head of development and international touring for exhibitions, Dondey takes those opportunities on the road to international audiences.
He traveled to Atlanta, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston and New York.
He added Roanoke to the list, to visit the Taubman.
“There was a direct and wonderful understanding and a super connection. That’s how it all started,” Dondey said.
That was about a year ago, according to Petersen.
“As Laurent was leaving Roanoke this past weekend, he said, ‘Our rendezvous is almost over!’” Petersen recounted.
Petersen and her team went on to pull together all the elements: the local collectors, the regional and state museums, borrowing what the museum needed in order to tell the story well. They met virtually with collaborators at The Grand Palais Immersif and the Mucha Foundation every other week, sometimes once a week.
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond was one of the most important puzzle pieces, because, according to Petersen, that museum has the largest holdings of Mucha and Art Nouveau outside of Europe. That museum’s director readily agreed to partner with the Taubman, Petersen said.
The VMFA is the largest lender on the exhibition side, which has loaned original posters, books, lithographs, sculptures and other decorative items. Additional period pieces are on loan from other regional collections, including a penny-farthing bicycle, couture dresses and jewelry.
“Being able to work with [VMFA] was critical to making this happen,” Petersen said.
In all, ten lenders plus a community of outside support came together to bring Petersen and her team’s vision to fruition, including the Grand Palais Immersif, the Mucha Foundation, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Roanoke History Museum, Bustle, local and regional collectors, vendors, small businesses, sound and light technicians, sensory builders and costume designers, and others.
“It takes a team, and it takes many people to dive deep,” Petersen said.
“Every institution can’t show everything all the time. These are works on paper, so they can’t be out all the time, either. They have to [be put away] to rest,” Petersen said, explaining the significance of having so much of the collection on display all at once.
“You see different examples of Art Nouveau, of the posters, of the linographs within the space, and they are… just radiant,” Petersen said.
Back to the future
With few exceptions, Mucha’s work was street art, art for the public sphere. He created billboards, murals and theatre advertisements. The image that kicks off the Taubman’s exhibition, once visitors leave Mucha’s studio immersion? The image that appears not once, twice, but four times throughout? JOB — It’s an ad… for cigarette papers.
Turn-of-the-century cities were bustling places, they were glamorous ideas. People filled the streets in bustles and hats and waistcoats. They drove carriages; a few drove cars. Folks were moving along. They were industrious. They were busy.
Maybe they were down and out and poor.
Maybe they were the common man.
Mucha’s illustrations were printed as posters, albeit enormous ones, as tall as a person or taller even. They were pasted on brick walls in big dirty cities, where smoke and dust and terrible odors filled the air. Everyone could see them — everyone. Mucha wanted every single person to see his work. They were advertisements.
The posters became filthy. They were pulled from the walls or pasted over. His work was popular; it spoke to people. Folks pulled the ads down and took them home, sometimes. They began to buy collector’s editions, the few large books that still exist. But Mucha wanted his work to be publicly accessible — to exist in the public sphere.
He became known as the originator of Art Nouveau. His style has endured, popping up again in poster designs in the 1960s, in the Grateful Dead era, in comic books, in superhero costumes, in manga and in video games.
Still, too, that manner of artwork and advertising has persevered. We’re no longer pasting posters to brick walls, but we’re painting murals across our cities. Bands and street artists print stickers and spackle them across street posts and stop light boxes and toilet stalls. Fans pull them off again, to take them home. The cycle repeats.
“Eternally New: The Art Nouveau World of Alphonse Mucha” will be open at the Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke Oct. 24 through March 16. Admission to the Taubman is always free; tickets to this special exhibition can be purchased at this link.
The museum is open on Thursdays through Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays 12 to 5 p.m., with extended hours on the first Fridays of the month until 9 p.m. for Late Night programming. The museum also offers daily guided tours at 1 p.m. Find more information at https://www.taubmanmuseum.org/mucha
At the Taubman, high schoolers, middle schoolers, and children 12 and under receive free admittance to the special exhibition. So do members of Roanoke College, Hollins University, and Radford University. All other adults pay no more than $10 per person.
“The Taubman is all about accessibility. We want everybody, no matter what their station in life, to have the opportunity to come to the Taubman and enjoy the great exhibitions, the great art and to learn and explore and hopefully enhance their lives in some way,” Fishwick said.
While this special exhibition isn’t entirely free, other museums charge a premium price for similar experiences. The New York Times reported last year that several major art museums were raising ticket prices to a new level; the highest amounts were hovering around the $30 per person mark. An immersive experience alone at the Grand Palais will cost 17,00 Euros, or about $18.
