‘Prince: The Immersive Experience’ Exhibit to Launch in Chicago
A new interactive exhibit titled Prince: The Immersive Experience is set to open in Chicago on June 9.
Located at the Shops at North Bridge on the Magnificent Mile, the exhibit will feature a partial recreation of Paisley Park's famed Studio A, archival material from various eras of Prince's career such as clothing, guitars and photographs and a special 3-D representation of the iconic Purple Rain album cover.
“You’re going to be able to step in in a Purple Rain album cover,” Kerry Black, cofounder of Superfly (which partnered with the Prince estate to produce the exhibit), told Rolling Stone. “Where you can get your photo up on the motorcycle. But we’re also doing a full buildout of the entire street scene, right? So there’s going to be the First Avenue club and a bunch of the stores.”
In the semi-replica of Studio A, visitors will also be able to step inside and interact with various equipment. “People are going to be able to go and sort of play producer and mix stems from ‘Let’s Go Crazy,'” Black said.
Prince's lighting designer, Roy Bennett, also helped to conceive the exhibit, working to create an audio-visual dance space for visitors. His expertise will be especially prominent in one room dedicated to the singer's Diamonds and Pearls era, where large torches, candelabras and strings of diamonds and pearls will be on view.
Additionally, Superfly has worked with Prince's estate to highlight some of his social-justice causes. “We really think about this as an entertainment experience and you’re going to have fun. But we will have that learning [component] as well,” Black said. “So, we’re going to have rooms around his activity in social justice and his championing of artists' rights and things of that nature.”
Black stated that the exhibit could potentially be put on view in different cities in the future: “Our hope here is that this is going to be wildly successful and that we’re going to be touring this all around the world. … And keep iterating on it and do new rooms for each city and just explore all different facets of his career and his music. We definitely couldn’t do all in one exhibit.”
Tickets for the exhibit, which will run until Oct. 9, will go on sale on March 31.