Taylor Swift fans are flocking to a museum in Germany displaying a portrait of Ophelia, who is the central figure in a song and music video from Taylor Swift’s new album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl’.
The Hessische Landesmuseum, in the central German city of Wiesbaden, welcomed a larger than usual number of visitors over the weekend as fans hoped to see the real-life version of the painting that opens the music video for the song “The Fate of Ophelia”. In the video, which has been viewed more than 65 million times on YouTube, the painting comes to life, with Swift at its center.
“We’re really enjoying this attention – it’s a lot of fun” museum spokeswoman Susanne Hirshman told The Associated Press. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the museum spokeswoman added: “We’re really surprised that the media is interested in this.”
The increase in the number of visitors started last week, he explained. “For us, it’s a really great opportunity to bring people who don’t know us yet to the Museum, but also just to talk about art.”
Fans realized that this is a 1900 Friedrich Heiser painting that is housed in this particular museum.
“It was a shock, to be honest. We have a colleague, who has a friend, who is a fan of Swift, and she noticed that the opening scene of the video bore a resemblance to Heiser’s painting, and we thought, what a coincidence – that’s fascinating.” said the representative of the Museum in a statement to “The Guardian” newspaper.
Although museum officials were unable to contact Swift’s team, fans themselves soon spread the news on social media. The museum has issued an invitation to all Swift fans to attend a special guided tour.
The news then went viral on the internet. Social media posts explaining the painting’s whereabouts received thousands of likes, far more than the hundred or so likes most of his posts tend to receive.
Hirschman explained that a family had traveled to the museum from Hamburg, a five-hour drive away, and some of the visitors were Americans from a nearby military base.
He estimated that 500 people visited the museum last weekend specifically to see the Ophelia painting, asking museum staff where they could find it – far exceeding the usual interest in the softly romantic image that shows Ophelia’s lips like rosebuds slightly open and her lifeless body surrounded by water lilies.
Many young women and girls posed for photos in front of the painting. “It’s a lot more teenagers than we usually see” Hirschman said.
In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Ophelia, his wife, a young noblewoman from Denmark, goes mad and drowns. While less well-known than John Everett Millay’s painting of Ophelia, the portrait also depicts a woman in a long dress lying drowned in water, surrounded by flowers.
Hirschman told the BBC that the scene depicted in the painting shows “the balance between life and death by presenting fragile women” which “fascinated the artists of the time”.
Source :Skai
I am Frederick Tuttle, who works in 247 News Agency as an author and mostly cover entertainment news. I have worked in this industry for 10 years and have gained a lot of experience. I am a very hard worker and always strive to get the best out of my work. I am also very passionate about my work and always try to keep up with the latest news and trends.
