The Van Gogh Museum Enters the Pokémon Universe, Teasing a Collaboration With the Beloved Pocket Monsters

The Van Gogh Museum and Pokémon Company have released a teaser trailer for a new and unexpected collaboration set to begin on September 28.

The companies shared the video teaser on Instagram on September 12, providing few details and cryptically captioning the video: “More information coming soon.”

In the video, Pikachu and Eevee can be seen running through a field of sunflowers before something in the sky catches their attention. The pocket monsters look up and see the sun and clouds transforming into the painterly style of Vincent Van Gogh—with loose brush strokes, swirls and all.

The sunflowers then come alive and are revealed to be the happy Sunflora species of Pokémon, which smile and dance as Pikachu and Eevee turn to look at each other.

A screenshot from a teaser video by The Pokémon Company and the Van Gogh Museum shows the characters Pikachu and Eevee walking in a field of sunflowers. Photo courtesy of The Pokémon Company/Van Gogh Museum.

After the animation ends, an image of the Sunflora can be seen superimposed on Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers (1888) in what appears to be a gallery view, a possible implication that the collaboration could include some sort of exhibition at the museum in Amsterdam.

“Are they gonna cut Pikachu’s ear off?” one person joked in a comment on the Instagram post.

Others remarked about how “random” the collaboration seems to be for both the company and the museum.

A screenshot from a teaser video by The Pokémon Company and the Van Gogh Museum shows the characters Pikachu and Eevee marveling as the sky transforms into a Van Gogh painting. Photo courtesy of The Pokémon Company/Van Gogh Museum.

The Pokémon Company currently has an ongoing partnership with the Gunma Museum of Natural History in Japan. That collaboration, an exhibition of fossilized Pokémon, will continue through December 3. It is the seventh museum in Japan to host the exhibition.

The company also previously collaborated with the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum to reveal trading cards inspired by Edvard Munch’s Scream to commemorate the opening of “Munch: A Retrospective” in 2018. The special cards featured characters including Pikachu, Mimikyu, Psyduck, Rowlet, and Eevee striking a pose like that in Munch’s painting.

Artnet News has reached out to the Pokémon Company and Van Gogh Museum for further information.

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