Update: Starry Night is now part of the ‘Lights Out: Recovering our Night Sky’ exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Over 200,000 people have visited so far and it has been an absolute hit.
Bring back the Starry Night
Bring back the Starry Night
Van Gogh painted Starry Night in Saint Rémy, France, in 1889. Today, we can no longer appreciate the Milky Way from there.
This interactive painting raises awareness of light pollution by suggesting we’re losing a major source of inspiration: the stars.
Turn on
Turn off
Turn off the house lights for stars to slowly appear… and enjoy the Starry Night!
At the Smithsonian
In 2019, Kim Arcand, an astronomer from NASA, contacted me to include this work in ‘Lights Out’, a light pollution exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, open since February 2023.
Since then, it has appeared in publications of the likes of The Washington Post and Forbes.