Inside The National Gallery’s Imaginarium

When The National Gallery turned 200 it asked itself a question few institutions dare: how do you celebrate the past without being trapped by it?

The answer wasn’t another blockbuster exhibition or a coffee-table book. It was something more ambitious — a digital world called the Imaginarium, where paintings talk back, time slows down, and the familiar rules of museum-going no longer apply.

Building a Brief Out of Paradoxes

The brief was deceptively simple: make a virtual gallery that is flexible, accessible, playful, and connective. In practice, that brief was impossible. Or at least it should have been.

“It was full of paradoxes,” recalls Juriaan Hoogervorst of Fabrique, the creative agency that partnered with The National Gallery. “Innovative but accessible. Global but personal. Immersive but simple.”

And yet, those contradictions turned out to be the fuel. Instead of copying the Gallery brick for brick, they built something stranger, freer—a place that could only exist online.

Four Rooms, One Choice

The team sketched out a digital multiverse: an Exhibition Area for curated shows, an Auditorium for events, a Laboratorium for making and tinkering, and the Imaginarium, a dreamlike zone designed purely to spark imagination.

When it came time to choose where to start, the answer was obvious. The Imaginarium wasn’t the safest bet, but it was the boldest. And bold was what the Gallery needed for its 200th birthday.

Not a Digital Twin, Not VR

Plenty of museums have tried “digital twins”—laser scans of galleries turned into online replicas. They’re accurate, yes. They’re also sterile. The Imaginarium takes a different path.

It’s not a tour, and it’s not virtual reality. No goggles required. You enter through a web browser on your phone or laptop. The environment feels like a dream: walls shifting with pigments pulled from the Gallery’s own scientific imaging, soundscapes composed by artist Nick Ryan. The space nods to the physical gallery but quickly slips into something more fantastical.

Learning Without Teaching

The heart of the Imaginarium is a deceptively old-fashioned idea: looking slowly. Once inside, you don’t swipe endlessly or click through menus. Instead, the system asks you questions. What’s the atmosphere in this painting? What catches your eye first?

Your answers are compared with responses from others. There’s no “correct” reply, just perspectives layered together. Gloomy, dramatic, tense—all valid.

This isn’t teaching. It’s coaxing. A dialogue between you and the canvas, with technology stepping quietly out of the way.

Animation, Lightly Applied

In some works, like Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s portraits, animation is minimal—a subtle shift of light or movement that draws your gaze. In others, like Joseph Wright of Derby’s candlelit drama, animation plays a larger role, helping the story unfold.

The trick was knowing when to stop. The goal was never to dazzle with effects, but to encourage seeing.

An Entrance Written in Poetry

Before you even arrive, the Imaginarium primes your imagination. Poet and novelist Sir Ben Okri wrote its introduction, a short piece that frames the experience not as a lesson but as a journey: “Enter, and expand your sense of possibilities. This is a space for the mind, for the imagination, the heart. It is your space.”

It’s onboarding not as instruction, but as spell-casting.

A Platform, Not a Project

The Imaginarium launched as part of the Bicentenary, with 50 paintings and support from Bloomberg Philanthropies (also see the 200 Creators project). But it isn’t a one-off experiment. It’s designed to grow—new paintings, new stories, new ways to enter into dialogue with art.

That’s the subtle genius of the project. It isn’t about preserving the Gallery in digital amber. It’s about giving the institution another stage—one where play, imagination, and technology overlap.

Why It Matters

The National Gallery could have made a safe choice. It could have built a faithful online copy of its rooms and called it a day. Instead, it built a dream machine.

By turning away from accuracy and toward imagination, the Gallery may have found the most honest way to meet audiences where they are: not rushing, not scrolling, but pausing long enough to really look.

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Lawrence Chiles from The National Gallery and Juriaan Hoogervorst from Fabrique spoke at the Museum Digital Summit 2025. You can try the Imaginarium here.