ACCIONA Living & Culture has partnered with Madrid's prestigious Museo del Prado to launch ART MASTERS: A Virtual Reality Experience, a groundbreaking project that merges classical art with cutting-edge immersive technology. This pioneering exhibition is revolutionizing how global audiences encounter classical masterpieces, using advanced virtual reality to bring five of the museum's most celebrated works to life in unprecedented ways.

The innovative experience allows visitors to step inside iconic paintings including Velázquez's Las Meninas, Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, Veronese's Venus and Adonis, Brueghel and Rubens's The Sense of Sight, and Goya's Witches Sabbath. For the first time in the Prado's history, these masterpieces that have never left and will never leave the museum's walls are reaching international audiences through an immersive, narrative-driven virtual reality experience.

Since its international debut, ART MASTERS has achieved remarkable success across major global cities. The exhibition opened in Shanghai on July 4, 2026, where it attracted over 10,000 visitors within just a few months, with its run extended due to overwhelming public demand. In Buenos Aires, the experience launched on September 4 and will continue until December 4, having already drawn more than 8,600 attendees. These impressive milestones mark the beginning of a worldwide journey, with additional cities soon to be announced as anticipation builds among audiences eager to step inside the Prado's masterpieces.

The initiative addresses a critical challenge facing museums in the digital age: how classical art institutions can evolve in a world increasingly dominated by entertainment, gaming, and immersive technology. By combining the Museo del Prado's artistic treasures with the latest advances in artificial intelligence and virtual reality, ACCIONA Living & Culture has created a visual, interactive, and deeply engaging form of cultural storytelling that appeals to both traditional museum-goers and new audiences familiar with gaming, film, and interactive design.

Curated under the direction of Alejandro Vergara, head of Conservation of Flemish Painting and Northern Schools at the Prado, ART MASTERS demonstrates how technological innovation can enhance cultural storytelling without replacing the physical museum experience. The project successfully blends artistic heritage with immersive media, creating a bridge between classical art appreciation and contemporary digital engagement.

Unlike traditional museum tours, this immersive experience transforms visitors from passive spectators into active participants. At the heart of ART MASTERS lies a compelling narrative featuring a fictional museum guard who, on his last day of work, leads visitors through an imaginative 35-minute journey across both real and dreamlike spaces. Through virtual reality headsets, visitors experience doors creaking open onto Bosch's surreal landscapes, navigate shadowy corridors leading to Goya's haunted visions, and ride elevators rising toward Velázquez's royal court.

Each scene meticulously combines rigorous academic research with theatrical staging, sophisticated sound design, and three-dimensional storytelling techniques. Rather than standing before static canvases, visitors unlock secret passageways, interact with characters, and witness paintings transform into cinematic worlds that unfold around them. The experience carefully reinterprets each painting through narrative and technology while preserving its historical and artistic integrity.

The journey takes visitors through a carefully curated sequence of masterpieces, beginning with the luminous The Sense of Sight (1617) by Brueghel and Rubens. Participants then enter Las Meninas (1656), where the Infanta Margarita and her court seem to meet the viewer's gaze directly. The experience continues into the mythological drama of Veronese's Venus and Adonis (c. 1580), descends into the unsettling world of Goya's Witches Sabbath (1820-23), and culminates in Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1500), a realm where paradises and nightmares come vividly to life in stunning three-dimensional detail.