ABOVE: Detail from Caravaggio’s Bacchus. A current exhibit of Caravaggio paintings is proving controversial because hi-res digital reproductions are standing in for the genuine articles.

Loyola University is about to blow your mind. They’ve gone all Baudrillard and decided that they want to put on a Caravaggio show—without any real Caravaggios hanging on the walls. “Caravaggio: An Impossible Exhibition” is composed of 57 backlit, mylar-mounted hi-res digital scans of the original works. There are only about 70 confirmed Caravaggios in existence, and putting so many of them on display in one place would be, as the exhibit title says, impossible. But is it OK for the Loyola U. Art Museum (this is its inaugural exhibit) to show these pieces like a real Caravaggio exhibit? Even if they’re very good reproductions, they’re still, you know, um, fakes. One museum administrator offers a rather sheepish sound bite about how it could totally be a post-modernist exhibit if that had been the intention. But it’s not, she adds.

They’re not trying to fake the visitors out here; the museum is clearly trying to show off works which would otherwise be inaccessible in North America—we’re all for accessibility. But the weird part about the exhibit, the fact that they’ve illuminated the images from behind so that some details that aren’t easily seen in the originals pop out more, is bizarre. Showing off a seldom seen collection of paintings is good: messing so hugely with the presentation doesn’t seem right to us.

LINK: Voice of America > Is It Still Art If It’s a Reproduction?