The Michelangelo Experience Tour
Michelangelo is arguably the greatest sculptor in history and is one of mankind’s most well-known artists. Previous exhibitions of his drawings set attendance records at the British Museum[*1]. The one time that the general public had a opportunity to see the Pieta in a setting other than the Vatican — in New York during the Worlds Fair of 1964 — it was the biggest draw of the event.
- With no museum or cathedral having had the ability to showcase all of Michelangelo’s masterpiece sculptures together in one location, our exhibition enables us to tell the story of the artistic life and body of Michelangelo’s work in a way never before expressed.
- The Michelangelo Experience, Inc. is, for the first time in history, bringing together in one location 19 posthumously cast original bronze sculptures by Michelangelo Buonarroti complemented with his original sketches and drawings.
- The typical exhibition will run from 4 to 6 months in most cities, with a select number of locations offering the potential for a longer term exhibit, such as Las Vegas, Chicago, and New York. The company is currently identifying the best potential markets for our exhibition and the optimal locations within those markets.
Comparable Tours
Few exhibitions could compare with that of the King Tut Tour, which stands as the most popular museum tour in history. Purely in terms of order of magnitude, with respect to attendance draw, Michelangelo as a headlining exhibit could be on par with King Tut. Following are attendance figures for several of the major stops on that tour:
King Tut Tour
| Venue | Visitors | Daily Avg. | Source |
| The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY | 1,200,000 | 9,677 | Museum News, Nov/Dec 2005 |
| The Dallas Museum of Art, TX | 664,000 | 3,088 | Dallas Morning News, April 2010 |
| Field Museum in Chicago, IL | 1,044,743 | 4,860 | Field Museum Magazine |
A more conservative comparison to The Michelangelo Experience Tour can be seen in the following exhibitions having the “Renaissance” as the exhibition theme:
Top Renaissance Exhibitions Since 2000:
| Venue | Visitors | Daily Avg. |
| Art and Love in Renaissance (Italy Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY) | 200,692 | 13,334 |
| The Mind of Leonardo (Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, Japan) | 796,004 | 10,071 |
| Leonardo Da Vinci Master Draftsman (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY) | 401,004 | 6,863 |
| The Medici and Science (Galleria degla Uffizzi, Florence, Italy) | 861,865 | 4,924 |
| Renaissance Italy (National of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan) | 422,721 | 4,403 |
| Michelangelo & the Ideal of Beauty (Galleria de Academia, Florence, Italy) | 581,545 | 3,373 |
| The Medici and Michelangelo (Art Institute of Chicago) | 274,234 | 3,189 |
| (Source: The Art Newspaper) | ||
1. Documentary Film: The scouting and initial shooting for a PBS-style documentary video began in the fall of 2009 and will be completed in 2011. The documentary takes the public on a tour of the project, visiting museums and their directors in Florence and the Vatican. At the Marinelli Foundry, we walk through the entire casting and finishing processes, accompanied by Michelangelo expert Prof. John T. Spike and Ferdinando Marinelli. Marinelli describes and shows the fascinating process by which the sculptures are cast and the painstaking method of finishing them by hand. We also visit with the curator of the Michelangelo museum (the Casa Buonarroti), the Director of the Vatican Museums, and other scholars and curators as we discuss the completed sculptures as well as their commitment to sharing their patrimony with the world.
2. Coffee table Book: Parallel with the documentary, a book on the Michelangelo sculptures will be published. In addition to Dr. Spike’s essays, a series of photographs of each sculpture, along with important and artistic detail images, will form this book. While this publication is a serious scholarly endeavor, for marketing appeal it will be produced in an oversized format suitable as a “coffee-table” book. Leading experts on Renaissance sculpture will be approached as additional contributing essayists.
Copies of the coffee-table art book will be available online, through select distributors and in exhibition gift shops of the Michelangelo Tour.
3. Website: Our Search Engine Optimized website dedicated to The Michelangleo Experience Tour also features an extensive and growing collection of original research, essays from leading renaissance art historians, images, blogs and video content about Michelangelo. As our extensive database of clearly cataloged information about Michelangelo grows, we are confident our website will become the #1 resource on the subject of Michelangelo. In addition to researching Michelangelo and purchasing tickets to The Michelangelo Experience Tour, visitors will also be able to purchase on the website our the coffee-table books, documentary DVD’s, and scaled-down Michelangelo sculptures in bronze and acrylic.
Sources:
1. The Art News Blog, Tuesday, March 21, 2006 — Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master