A bedroom is a person’s most personal place. Entering someone’s bedroom provides a voyeuristic experience, placing you in their physical, emotional and mental space.

So, to connect the public with Van Gogh we gave them the ability to enter his bedroom. Now for the first time, instead of just looking at a painting, people could live inside one.

To help people immerse themselves into the life and art of Van Gogh, we built a replica of his 1888 Bedroom painting. Then, through a first-of-its kind partnership with Airbnb, let people book a night inside it.

The room is listed by Van Gogh himself. “Just to keep myself in paint,” the artist explained.

The campaign started with a single listing on AirBnb announcing the room. The AIC then informed their followers over social media that the first three-week block of nights would become available the next day.

AirBnb also featured it prominently on their blog and social channels. Other blogs, newspapers and TV stations picked up the story and amplified it. This amplification continued exponentially around the world, making a huge audience aware of the exhibit.

The room became available the first night of the exhibit. The room ends on the exhibit’s final day, when Van Gogh leaves town.

Because of demand, guests were limited to one night stays. Rooms were made available 3 or 4 weeks at a time, with each block selling out within minutes.

The room cost $31k to build, and generated over $6M in earned media.

By leveraging AirBnb, we amplified our paid media reach by 950%, scaling it globally.

Van Gogh BnB has been covered in more than 100 countries, gaining 623 million earned media impressions.

Online pre-sale tickets for the exhibit were up 250%.

On average 4700 people visited every day over the first six weeks. Total attendance during this time was more than 200,000–beating business targets by 73%.

“Van Gogh Bedrooms” was the Art Institute of Chicago’s highest-attended exhibit in 15 years.

With almost no media budget, we brought news of the Art Institute of Chicago’s “Van Gogh’s Bedrooms” exhibit to hundreds of millions of people. Van Gogh BnB generated both worldwide attention and record-breaking attendance for the Art Institute of Chicago, and it increased the organization's reputation as a world-class modern institution.

The target audience was people living in and around Chicago. We knew art-enthusiasts would already be interested so we aimed to communicate with the wider public. Many of these people are familiar with Van Gogh’s painting and the tabloid-esque stories of his life, so we wanted to demonstrate that this was a view of Van Gogh they had never seen before.

A painting can only get you so close to an artist. And the stories of Van Gogh’s exploits only reveal so much about the man. So we thought the truest way for people to connect to Van Gogh’s life and art was to invite them to spend a night inside this room.

The Art Institute of Chicago was introducing a new Van Gogh exhibit. It wasn’t a wide retrospective, and it didn’t contain many of Van Gogh’s most famous works. Instead it was a sharply focused show that concentrated on the artist’s two years in Arles France.

The show brought Van Gogh’s three “Bedroom” paintings together for the first time in North America. This appealed to art-enthusiasts, but meant less to the general public.

The intent of the show and the brief were the same: Bring people closer to the artist, not just as a painter, but as a person. The objective was to create interest and attendance for this very focused show.

And, because it’s an arts organization, do it with an extremely limited budget.