Following the "Atelier des Lumières" in Paris, the "Infinity des Lumières" in Dubai or the "Bassin des Lumières" in Bordeaux, a new digital art center called "Hall des Lumières" is opening its doors. Wednesday in the magnificent setting of a former bank in the Tribeca district of lower Manhattan, a depository for the first Irish emigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

For the president of the private French company Culturespaces, Bruno Monnier, these digital art centers that his company is opening around the world are "21st century museums" supposed to "attract millennials, young people and all those who do not go to "classic" museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The financial and tourist megalopolis of nine million souls, "great world city" according to Mr. Monnier, therefore gives in to the international fashion for "immersive" digital exhibitions: from Wednesday and for nine months, visitors will be able to immerse themselves in the works of the master of symbolist painting of the Art Nouveau and Vienna Secession movements, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), and Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000), painter and architect of modern art, also Austrian .

In the dark, accompanied by classical music and electronic sounds, Klimt's masterpieces -- such as the famous "Kiss" or "The Three Ages of Woman" -- are projected on the walls, pillars, ceilings and on the ground of the 3,000 m2 of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, a building from the beginning of the 20th century in the French Beaux-Arts architectural style, which also gave rise to the monumental Grand Central station in the heart of Manhattan.

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The "Hall of Lights" of Culturespaces, and its American partners, will rent for ten years the building of the former New York bank, a century-old building classified as a historical monument, confides Mr. Monnier to AFP.

In New York, where office and residential real estate prices are among the highest on the planet, Culturespaces has partnered with the international entertainment and events group IMG.

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For its managing director Stephen Flint Wood, the digital art centers are "a great way for people to approach the arts and are very complementary with the major museums and galleries in New York".

“You can come here, in this atmosphere of total immersion, and then go to a museum to see some of these paintings,” he advises future visitors.

© 2022 AFP