The Netherlands is currently hosting the largest retrospective exhibition on Johannes Vermeer to date. Housed at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the Dutch master’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of the many paintings on view, as institution’s around the globe have loaned out works for the show. To fill the gap, The Hague’s Mauritshuis museum has, rather controversially, briefly replaced Girl with a Pearl Earring with a series of AI counterparts.
Created by Berlin-based digital artist, Julian van Dieken, the portraits were made using the Midjourney AI tool, which translates text prompts into artwork through a machine-learning algorithm. From a child to a senior to several unusual interpretations, the Mauritshuis selected five artworks out of a pool of 3,482. Dieken was naturally elated to be chosen, stating that it’s “surreal to see it in a museum.”
Dutch artist Iris Compiet thought otherwise. “It’s an insult to the legacy of Vermeer and also to any working artist. Coming from a museum, it’s a real slap in the face,” Compiet said in an interview with AFP. Reflecting the discourse across the web on what is art and what isn’t, both the museum and it’s visitors remain divided. “Our opinion is, we think it’s a nice picture, we think it’s a creative process,” said a representative of Mauritshuis. “We’re not the museum to discuss if AI belongs in an art museum.”
Elsewhere, Kayla Witt explores wellness and uncertainty in her new solo exhibition at Sow & Tailor.
