To celebrate the opening of the new entrance of the Van Gogh Museum, we designed a labyrinth consisting of 125,000 sunflowers on the Museum Square. This led people automatically to the new entrance. People couldn’t miss it! The labyrinth fitted 100% in the payoff: ‘Van Gogh engages you’. The audience was confronted with 125 questions used in the overall campaign. People all over the world could ask their Van Gogh question. Eg. Why did he cut his ear? These questions were placed in the labyrinth. With the specially designed App, visitors could find the answers to all these questions. We created ‘secret rooms’ where artists showed their inspiration by Van Gogh, from visual artists to singer-songwriters.

After the official opening the labyrinth was free for visitors. The last day, the Van Gogh Museum employees handed out the sunflowers. Amsterdam turned yellow! The huge sunflower labyrinth couldn’t be missed.

At first it is revolutionary to use 125,000 living sunflowers, to get and keep them in the best shape, during a week on the Museum Square in open air.

To be sure to have a sufficient amount of flowers we planted 300,000 seeds at 5 growers throughout the Netherlands. We planted in shifts at the beginning of April until the start of May. In sunny and humid weather the sunflowers grow

faster than in drought.

The installation was build in 3 days with over 100 volunteers of Flora Holland and greenery schools.

The half round design of the labyrinth let the audience focus on the Van Gogh Museum, from every angle. So every picture linked the labyrinth to the museum. Especially from the photo deck (8 meters height) we created on the square. The labyrinth consists over 800 meters of pathway and more than 5,000 square meters.

Visitors

The labyrinth attracted around 4,000 VIP-guests and 40,000 visitors in the opening weekend

Museum

The number of visitors (fysical) was increased by 16% in the month September: 150,433 visitors in September 2015 compared to 129,547 visitors in September 2014.

Website

The number of visitors (website) increased by 107% in the week of Augustus 31st – September 6th a total of 789,421

Press Value

National: 174 publications (press value) € 851,145

International: 457 publications (estimated value) of € 2,102,200

(including the Photo of the day in The New York Times)

Social Media

Twitter

Potential reach: 28.42 M (+ 212%)

Number of retweets: 1,068 (+ 249%)

Favourites: 585 (+ 94%)

Number of mentions: 1,255 (+ 99%)

Facebook

Impressions: 4.08 M (+ 317%)

Number of shares: 13,350 (+ 414%)

Number of likes: 57,470 (+ 227%)

Number of reactions: 1,085 (+ 293%)

Sponsorships

New collaboration with 3 sponsors (>450,000 euro)