We love going to IX Art Park, and one rainy, messy night, we bought tickets to their immersive art exhibit “Through the Looking Glass” and spent time enjoying the creative spirit and energy brought by some of the area’s finest.
This art exhibit, featuring 14 local artists, brags being the first fully immersive art experience in Virginia. The space is 3,000-square-feet inside the old textile mill, and visitors walk through an old “cleaning closet” and into this wild world of multimedia exhibits.
It is a wonderful celebration of local artists (one of which, Beatrix Ost, is the subject of a fascinating piece in Garden & Gun) working together yet also displaying their unique talents. For someone who just moved to Charlottesville recently, it was a great introduction to some of the names, phases and personalities unique to Charlottesville.
And the media used is diverse and unexpected: there is a wall of glass insects, a 50-foot caterpillar to walk through, a black-light fueled word wall, a gnome house (my personal favorite) and so much more to discover.
Even more fun!? This is all meant to be touched. The place is a fairyland open for kids to fall into fantasy and parents don’t have to expend energy chasing and saying “don’t touch!”
This is a really great idea and we, as a family who has been fortunate to keep our jobs during COVID, we are very happy to support our local art community. This is a personal mission.
That said, this seems like it still needs some refinement overall. One of the major exhibits inside Through the Looking Glass (an interactive wall video installation of some sort) was actually broken and inoperable upon our visit.
And this feels expensive for a family of 4. It is $15 per adult and $12 for kids (ages 4 to 12). Kids under 3 are free. There is a family 4-pack available for $48, which is what we opted for.
And while COVID protocols instituted by the exhibit allow no more than 10 people to be in the exhibit for 1 hour, we found that our kids weren’t in for the whole hour allotted to us. They enjoyed it, and found the experience memorable, but expressed that just around 40 minutes was enough to satiate them.
There also feels like there is room for the artists to integrate their exhibits with each other’s more, to have them play against and with each other to create a comprehensive world. And there is definitely space available for more artists to join (which I hope they do!).
Regardless of those points, I still personally love and appreciate that this is here and was so happy to hopefully be part of its success. I want it to succeed, and I want it to grow.
My kids are so rarely exposed to professional art these days. And being able to see artists in their hometown use individual skills to create a wonderland is nothing of inspirational to kids (of all ages).
More on IX Art Park's Through the Looking Glass:
- Official website
- A great article on the exhibit in the Cav Daily
Raising Charlottesville is a website dedicated to highlighting fun & local activities for families living in the Charlottesville, VA area.