Imagine if you could take all of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescos down, piece by piece and send them on a traveling exhibit? Imagine experiencing the images up close in your own hometown with dimmed lighting and beautiful music setting the mood, sharing a whispered reverence of the works before you.
Fortunately, the frescos remain intact in Vatican City, but modern technology has allowed the rest of this wish to come true. Using extremely high-resolution photography of the post-restoration ceiling, the images are presented on 34 colorful panels and curated for the masses in the Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Exhibition.
Based on the concurrent show dates, at least two copies of the panels have been traveling the world since 2015 and are currently on exhibit at Christ Cathedral, Orange County, California until the extended date of August 23, 2020 and Church of the Holy Cross and St. Bartholomew, Wroclaw, Poland until the extended date of May 31, 2020.
I was lucky to tour the exhibit at Stanley Marketplace in Aurora, Colorado in the summer of 2019. Whether you practice a religion or find your spirituality in beauty and art you may find yourself as I did, awe-struck by this experience. While you can't actually slap the hand of god, like Ouisa Kittridge did in Six Degrees of Separation, you can get close enough to view the spectacular details and beautiful colors. I will leave you to enjoy these images and explore the rabbit hole of information on the web about this exhibit, Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel itself.
If none of this floats your boat and you prefer to feed the more irreverent side of your personality, you may be interested in other exhibitions such as the Museum of Failure, or Disgusting Food Museum currently on tour by, the same production company that manages this tour.
Happy Holidays to you and yours!!
