A German museum was unexpectedly overrun last week by Taylor Swift fans because one of its paintings bears a striking resemblance to the opening scene of Swift’s current No. 1 hit video, “The Fate of Ophelia.”
Hundreds of additional visitors came to the Hessische Landesmuseum in the central German city of Wiesbaden to admire the painting, among them many American families who are stationed at an U.S. Army base in Wiesbaden.
The Swifties goal: an Art Nouveau painting by Friedrich Heyser featuring Ophelia, Hamlet’s beloved in William Shakespeare’s play of the same name.
In the original play, Ophelia, a young noblewoman of Denmark, ultimately becomes mad and drowns.
Heyser’s oil-on-canvas painting presents the figure of Ophelia clad in white and surrounded by white water lilies. The painting’s exact year of creation is not known but experts believe it dates back to around 1900.
In the opening scene of the video for the hit song “The Fate of Ophelia,” Swift slips into the role of Ophelia and becomes a living painting.
The scene shows similarities to the work of Heyser, museum director Andreas Henning told German news agency dpa.
Museum spokesperson Susanne Hirschmann said the museum team recognized the resemblance earlier this month and decided to invite Swifties for a special tour next month. Once they had posted an announcement of the tour on their website, news of the Ophelia painting soon went viral online.
“We’re really enjoying this attention – it’s a lot of fun,” Hirschmann said, adding that all fans showing up for the Nov. 2 tour “Taylor Swift’s ‘Ophelia’ at the Wiesbaden museum” dressed as the pop star or as “the tragic beauty Ophelia” will be able to attend the tour for free.
There’s just one problem: the tour is already completely booked, so the museum may just have to add additional tours for all art-crazed Swiftie fans.
Henning said the museum has already tried to contact the singer, but has had no success so far getting a hold of the world star. “I would love to show Taylor Swift the original painting sometime,” he said.
“We are surprised and delighted that Taylor Swift used this painting from the museum as inspiration for her video,” Henning said. “This is, of course, a great opportunity to attract people to the museum who don’t know us yet.”
The museum said it does not know for sure if the art work served as a template for Swift’s song, which is currently a No. 1 hit both in Germany and the United States.
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