Doesn’t the Warwick Mall seem like an unlikely location for a photographic recreation of The Sistine Chapel? It strikes me as similar to hearing that Buddy Cianci was dating Sophia Loren; totally improbable. And yet there it is, right inside a side entrance, next to Target. An empty corner store has been repurposed to display good quality photos of every square inch of one of the great accomplishments of western art.
Over the last couple of decades, there have been any number of “immersive exhibitions” of the work of famous artists, notably Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet. In these shows the audience experiences projections of the work that are put into motion, come in and out of focus, overlap, and change scale, often accompanied by a sound track. This presentation is thought to heighten the impact of the original paintings. Sometimes virtual reality allows participants to walk right into the scene. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel The Exhibition is not immersive in this sense. However, what it does provide is the opportunity to look at these famous images from a different perspective and at a different distance. When you see the originals in Rome, the ceiling is approximately 68 feet above your head. Looking up is a neck-straining, vertigo-inducing experience in which many details are lost. At the Warwick Mall, all the photos are vertical, at eye level, and you can study them from a foot away, or even an inch away if you want to. Under no circumstance should you pass up a trip to Rome, but also don’t let the fact that this exhibition isn’t “the real thing” negate that it is quite interesting and engaging.
Inside the repurposed commercial space, all of the twenty-nine separate works that make up the ceiling of The Sistine Chapel are arranged in two concentric circles. The inner circle shows the nine monumental frescos that depict stories from Genesis, the first book of the Christian Bible. The stories include the creation of the physical world, the creation of man and woman, Adam and Eve’s fall and expulsion from paradise, and tales from the life of Noah. In the exhibition, as in the ceiling, these images are not presented in chronological order, which is a little confusing. However, each of them is riveting and invites you to take a long and thoughtful look. The works were painted between 1508 and 1512, so people have been looking at them and analyzing them for over 500 years. A couple of them, The Creation of Man and The Expulsion from Paradise, for example, are so familiar that it is tempting to assume you’ve already seen all there is to see. Hang in there. Give it a few minutes. There is more to the story than you might think. For example, in The Expulsion from Paradise, Adam and Eve are portrayed twice, once before they have eaten the forbidden fruit and again afterwards, as they are forced at sword point out of Eden. Before they bite the apple they are young, energetic, intimate, and kind of raunchy. They look like the couple this joke is told about: What was the first thing Adam said to Eve? “You better stand aside. I don’t know how big this thing is going to get.” Perhaps only moments later they are expelled from paradise. They have aged twenty years and are despondent, lethargic, and filled with shame. Many of us who think of ourselves as sex-positive may reject this whole notion of original sin, but the power of the storytelling in this picture is undeniable.
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel The Exhibition provides an app with an audio tour that you can download to your phone. Bring some earbuds. The information in the audio tour, the wall text, and the catalog is informative, but basic. Of course, if you want to go deeper there are enough books, videos, and articles analyzing this masterwork to keep you busy for years. Additionally, there is all the biblical scholarship regarding the stories themselves. For example, take The Drunkenness of Noah. In the Bible story, after the flood, Noah has planted a vineyard. He drinks too much wine and falls asleep naked in his tent. One of his sons, Ham, walks in on him and sees his naked father. He tells his other two brothers, Shem and Japheth, and they cover their father, going to great pains not to look at his body. When Noah finds out what happened he curses Ham and reduces him to the level of a servant to his brothers. Michelangelo illustrates this passage in a manner that seems completely unconcerned with the biblical morality of the story. In his painting, not only is Noah naked but so are all three of his sons. They do seem to be covering the drunkard, but with a transparent cloth, and they are not looking away. In fact one is pointing a finger at him as if to say, “Yep, Pop has passed out again. What the hell! A little moderation, old guy, right?” All the layers of possible interpretation created by the Bible story itself and Michelangelo’s illustration of it are quite fascinating and mysterious. Of course there are no right or wrong answers, but there sure is a lot to think about.
The paintings that make up the outer ring of the exhibit are the smaller, oddly shaped images that fit together like puzzle pieces with the central images to fill the whole arch of the immense ceiling. They were mostly portraits of prophets, sibyls, and ancestors of Christ. They are magnificent – we’re talking about Michelangelo after all – but they lack the narrative energy that pulls you in to the main frescos. It is also a bit odd that the artist is offering portraits of people whose appearance would have been completely unknown to him. I imagine him walking around Rome thinking, “I got to do a picture of The Prophet Ezekiel. What in the hell did he look like?” Then he spots an old guy selling sandals in the market and shouts out to him, “Hey you! Come to my studio tomorrow. You’re going to be Ezekiel!”
A visit to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel The Exhibition is highly recommended. You won’t regret it. It runs through Sunday, January 18, 2026. General admissions is $26. One further tip; take a sketch book and copy his drawings of hands. Oh my God! They are marvelous.
Great to read a pretty darn good artist writing about an incredible artist. Lots of insight. Having seen the original in Rome, I think I will pass going to visit to Warwick , but I’m glad something so profound is here in our midst.