RICHMOND — Create a giant, 30-foot Vincent Van Gogh-inspired sunflower with live plants and flowers when the Science Museum of Virginia opens the giant screen film Van Gogh: Brush With Genius on Saturday, May 1. Help the sunflower come into full bloom 11 a.m.-2 p.m.

“Join us as we turn our classic 10-story rotunda into a work of art Van Gogh himself would be proud of,” says Science Museum of Virginia Director and CEO Richard Conti. “Strange’s Florists, Greenhouses and Garden Centers has generously loaned us hundreds of beautiful flowers. Sunflower seeds are available for the first 250 guests and the entire day will feature educational activities and demonstrations related to Van Gogh, along with several shows of Van Gogh: Brush With Genius in the IMAX®DOME.”

“This is a chance to see Van Gogh’s work in a way we’ve never seen before,” says Conti. “This giant screen film provides insight into how one of the world’s most recognizable artistic geniuses could have died by his own hand, penniless and unknown at the age of 37.”

Van Gogh’s signature brush strokes, vivid yellows and deep blues light up the five-story dome screen as you dive into the heart of his paintings. It’s enormously larger than life. On Van Gogh’s self portrait with a pale blue background a one inch brush stroke would be more than three feet long. The painting is 25 inches high and 21 inches wide. On the dome it is 3,000 square feet. In conservative terms it would have taken at least 15 gallons of paint to create an original the size of an IMAX® image.

For the first time in IMAX® discover the work of this great genius as it takes on a new life — watch as a sketch becomes a painting filled with color and texture. Share the painter’s joy at discovering how using complementary colors heightens the colors. “If a stroke of red is surrounded by, green,” Van Gogh wrote to his brother, “the red will become more intense …” You can see it in his paintings and learn more about complementary colors in the Science Museum’s Light and Color Demonstration.

Van Gogh: Brush With Genius retraces the artist’s footsteps, from the Netherlands to Paris, Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise. Documentary filmmaker Peter Knapp portrays himself as he draws on Van Gogh’s personal letters to his brother to provide intimate insight into the work of one of the most celebrated artists in the world. Hélène Seuzaret portrays Ellen Bakhuys — a contemporary museum researcher, the only fictional character in the film, studying Van Gogh’s letters and notebooks. Her role was inspired by Wouter van der Veen who has translated 300 letters Van Gogh wrote in French. They give evidence of the fire and passion of a man who painted as he loved and who loved as he painted.

Van Gogh: Brush With Genius is a co-production of Caméra Lucida and La Géode. Based on an original idea by Peter Knapp, the film is directed and produced by Françoise Bertrand. Jacques Gamblin portrays Van Gogh. Hélène Seuzaret portrays the researcher Ellen Bakhuys. Van Gogh: Brush With Genius is produced with cooperation from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Musée d’Orsay in Paris and Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. It is distributed by MacGillivray Freeman Films. The production was filmed in France and the Netherlands.

Van Gogh: Brush With Genius is featured at the Science Museum’s IMAX®DOME Saturday, May 1-Friday, June 18. Tickets for Van Gogh: Brush With Genius are $8.50. Tickets for Van Gogh: Brush With Genius and Science Museum exhibits and demonstrations are $14 for ages 4-12, 60+ and active military and $15 for ages 13-59. Children 3 and under are free.

For information call (804) 864-1400, or 1-800-659-1727, or click here. The Science Museum is located at 2500 West Broad Street.

– The information above was provided by Nancy Tait with the Science Museum.