The recent suggestion to send the Mona Lisa to the Louvre-Lens Museum for a temporary exhibition poses a fascinating question.
For some, the great masterpieces of art, including this iconic work, must be moved to a location where there is an audience that will never have the desire or the means to come and admire it where it is permanently displayed. And who, if they came, would be caught in the crowd of tourists preventing anyone from seriously approaching these treasures.
For others, moving such piece is impossible because of its fragility, the cost of its insurance and the security it requires. Moreover, they say, spectators will not go to see her more near their home any more than they would in Paris, which is not so far away.
Indeed, no one disputes the need for loaning works of art from one museum to another. And it is even at the heart of the activity of many curators and museum directors to plan, several years in advance, provisional exhibitions, asking other museums around the world to lend them artworks. In their requests, they often leverage loans they have already made, or that they are determined to accept in exchange. Thus, in this gigantic swapping of works of art, thousands, tens of thousands of artworks, travel each year across the world from one museum to another. And this makes it possible to organize thematic and retrospective exhibitions, which are both absolutely indispensable to the knowledge of art and its critique, as well as to the life of museums.
However, unfortunately these exhibitions are only visible to a very small number of people, even if their audience is sometimes counted in millions.
One could imagine a better preparation today by using the means of today’s technologies: instead of moving such delicate works, why not digitize the most important million artworks that are scattered in thousands of museums around the world (and some major artworks that are in neglected museums, often poorly maintained) and expose them in virtual reality, in three-dimensional image, available to all those who would have the necessary glasses to have access to them.
This would provide the museum curators with an absolutely exciting opportunity to think of and organize exhibitions with infinite artworks, and without the hassle of today’s transportation.
The technologies to make it happen exist. As it always is the case, these technologies are already in use in military activities. Nothing would preclude making them massively available for the purpose of art.
The consequences would be revolutionary. Perhaps there would be a few fewer people in very large museums; but it would no longer be just tens of thousands of people, or, at most, a few millions who would see the works that are collected virtually and for eternity this time. Rather, it would be hundreds of millions or even billions. The precision would be such that one would no longer be able to discern the original copy.
One day, perhaps all the real works of art will be permanently stored in safes and accessible only by their virtual replica.
After all, such is already the fate of literary works, which no one can imagine reading the handwritten version of the author.
Best or worst of worlds?
j@attali.com