From December 10 to February 20, 2011, you can see and feel 18 fake sculptures in the Hong Kong Museum of Art in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. The real ones will stay safe in Le Louvre in Paris. The invitation to touch in combination with the picture on the advertisement of Venus de Milo (Aphrodite de Milo) is awkward for the prudish Hong Kong government, because she is … well not really dressed. And if you look carefully at the picture you see a giant hand holding the sculpture, not unlike King Kong’s fist, but then shaven. Or, the replica is made on a smaller scale of course. After having had the privilege to see the real sculptures I will pass this time. Even though it is tempting to touch Venus (and she cannot even slap you for it) and her replica colleagues, IP Dragon thinks nothing beats the original sculptures. These bear so much history can you sense it, without touching. I do not know whether this makes me implicitly into a proponent of lugging the invaluable classic sculptures with all risks involved, or whether I advocate for the Hong Kong people to massively fly to Paris and increase their ecological footprint.
For those of you who are tactilely inclined, you can find more information:
http://hk.art.museum (notice the .museum top level domain name)
You can click on the picture (Danny Friedmann) to enlarge.
