The Mauritshuis

You can describe art in hundreds of different ways, you can talk about the composition, style, artist and even how the paint was made. The Mauritshuis “Roofkunst – 10 verhalen” (Loot – 10 stories) exposition talks about something completely different, the unique history that connects the artworks in the exposition: They were stolen.

Just telling people these stories didn’t feel adequate, even showing them wasn’t enough, so during this exposition people are transported to an important moment in the artworks’ history. We got to develop this experience in Virtual Reality (VR).

The Mauritshuis “Roofkunst – 10 verhalen” exhibition tells the story of 10 looted artworks that are on display during the exhibition. We highlighted three of these stories through VR.

- The Quadriga on top of the Brandenburger Tor, looted by Napoleon.
- An Indonesian Kris dagger, looted by the Dutch army during the colonial wars.
- The last self-portrait made by Rembrandt van Rijn in 1669, looted by the Nazis for Adolf Hitlers Personal Führermuseum.

The project was a unique collaboration of the classical art museum Het Mauritshuis, film studio Jongsma+O’Neil, and Moyosa Media. Due to this interdisciplinary team, we got to tell a unique story in an engaging way.

VR can be quite overwhelming. To mitigate this we developed the experience in a way that the user can just enjoy it without interacting with any UI. The host only needs 1 button, powered by custom hardware, to start and stop the experience. The rest of the experience is automated, from starting the program to calibrating the headset. This has made the experience seamless for users and the hosts. It has also lowered the amount of training we needed to provide and the amount of tech support needed in case of problems.

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