U.S.

Van Gogh Exhibit Goes West

January 16, 1999 / 2:44 PM EST / AP

After dazzling the nation's capital, an exhibit of Vincent van Gogh paintings is headed for a city that truly appreciates money, madness and fame, for a four-month run expected to draw nearly one million people.

"Van Gogh's Van Goghs: Masterpieces From the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam," 70 paintings ranging from his dark Potato Eaters to the stunning Wheatfield With Crows, opens Sunday to rock concert-type hype.

The exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the second and last U.S. stop before the paintings go back to Amsterdam on May 16. "These pictures will not travel again in this number in our lifetimes," Van Gogh Museum Director John Leighton said Friday.

LACMA is charging what is believed to be the highest price ever for a ticket to a U.S. museum exhibit: $23.50 for an adult weekend pass, including service charges, largely to pay for security, transportation and the climate-controlled exhibit space.

Add the costs of parking, food, a $5 audio tour and souvenirs from the two shops, and it makes for an expensive family outing.

But that hasn't dampened demand for the biggest thing to come to Los Angeles since the King Tut exhibit in 1978. More than 200,000 tickets have been sold and the museum expects 900,000 people will tour the exhibit.

After watching van Gogh mania sweep Washington, Los Angeles museum officials took a number of steps to cut down on gridlock. Tickets are time- and date-stamped. The museum will be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. A tent will be set up in a field behind the museum to shelter visitors waiting for their assigned times.

All this in a movie town with a rap as a cultural wasteland.

"The entertainment industry has masked for many years the truths of Los Angeles," said Andrea Rich, the museum's president.

The van Gogh show's three-month run at the National Gallery of Art in Washington drew 450,000 people, including President Clinton. Tickets there were free, but scalpers fetched more than $100 on some days.

The paintings, which trace van Gogh's career from age 27 to his suicide at 37 in 1890, are on loan from the van Gogh family's collection at the museum of the van Gogh Foundation in Amsterdam while it is being renovated.

The works include such famous paintings as The Bedroom, Self-Portrait as an Artist and Wheatfield with a Reaper, along with lesser-known works that trace his development as an artist.

Van Gogh's life story, including the episode in which he severed his own ear, has been embraced by popular culture. Hollywood has made several films, most notably Lust For Life starring Kirk Douglas.

"Van Gogh represents the long held popular notion of what an artist should be: poverty stricken, struggling, misunderstood in his own time, passionate, antisocial, awkward, psychologically different," said museum Director Graham Beal. "Then ther's the final gratifying (element) of him seeming to go mad."

Today, his paintings are worth a fortune. Prices paid at auction include $82.5 million for Portrait of Dr. Gachet in 1990 and $71.5 million last November for a self-portrait. Neither is in this exhibit. Nor are the famous Irises or The Starry Night.