It was the self portrait of the French impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Present-day technology brought the 1899 painting to life, making him speak, though he did so more in the words of Museum of Art and Light officials (encouraging visitors to follow its social media pages) than of Renoir himself.

The new museum opened wrapped up its first week on Friday with about 800 visitors coming through the doors, according to executive director Erin Dragotto.

I was one of them.

Dragotto said, like me, members of the community were excited to see the museum finally.

“I liked on opening day seeing smiling faces, people really appreciating the art on the wall and actually interacting with it in the immersive space,” Dragotto said. “For our staff, the highlight was finally seeing the public enjoying it. We had been sitting with this content for a long time.”

The immersive exhibition environment I was in, called Mezmereyz, projects the impressionist paintings of Renoir onto the walls, allowing you to see the details of his brushstrokes. The exhibit moves fast, always changing into a different painting. The colors especially are captivating as they mainly depict landscapes and people.

Many of these works of art, like Renoir’s portrait outside the exhibit, are made to move in a loop, repeating a moment in time. Boats rock upon the water, and a girl washes clothes in a river. I had to make another double take as more portraits blinked. Classical music elevated the immersion even more.

In the third-floor fine art gallery, you can find more work by Renoir, along with other 20th-century artists like Salvatore Dali and Pablo Picasso. This includes Renoir’s “L’enfant aux biscuit,” which captures a moment of Renoir’s son, Jean Renoir, when he was small, enjoying a cookie.

The immersive Renoir exhibit will run until Aug. 31.

Dragotto said opening day on Nov. 8 saw a steady stream of visitors, and the Manhattan community was welcoming, with many offering positive feedback for the new museum. The concept came about five years ago, and its groundbreaking was in September 2022.

“Right away people were super excited,” Dragotto said. “People would say things like ‘I can’t believe I’m in Manhattan, Kansas. I think it looks like I’m in Manhattan, New York.’”

The museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. and Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed on Tuesdays. 

“We’re working up to a boil,” Dragotto said. “I think there’s a lot of excitement but I don’t think people necessarily come right away. It’s going to be slow at first and that is predicted. When the weather gets colder is when people tend to move inside and tend to go places where they have things to do inside and so that’s when we’ll see an uptick in attendance.”

In other parts of the museum, there are exhibits of generative art and digitally illustrated non-fungible tokens. I couldn’t help but think about how much art has changed, even through the last century. As I played around with the generative art computer, trying and failing to make something I thought looked beautiful, I hoped art in the future would never lose the human touch.

Though the medium was different, some of the digital illustrations captured landscapes and moments like the impressionist paintings did. These illustrations featured farms, highways and a city street. These were more through the lens of a distant observer floating above the scene or standing across the road. It was still in many ways different from a painter walking through a landscape with a canvas and painting en plein air.

Technology brought such an awe-inspiring experience in the Renoir exhibit, so I know it can be used to enrich the artistic experience and draw people in. Maybe it will motivate someone to pick up a brush and capture the small moments of today. The moments in time and ever-changing seasons that inspired the painters are long past, but art keeps it living forever.

As for technology, it all depends on how you use it.