Read the text below.
After sending its most famous work to be featured in Amsterdam’s blockbuster 2023 exhibition of nearly every work by Johannes Vermeer, the Mauritshuis museum found itself with a blank space where the iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring had been displayed.
The Hague-based institution turned to more than 2,700 artists, from Texas to Ukraine, from age 7 to 70, who created their own interpretations of the 17th-century masterpiece.
A selection of 60 works using materials ranging from orange peels to bottle caps to sweatshirts was exhibited in the museum while the painting was on loan 40 miles (64 kilometers) to the north.
“The submissions continue to come, it will never end with her,” Martine Gosselink, director of the Mauritshuis museum, told The Associated Press, pointing to the ongoing popularity of works featuring the mystery girl.
A 2020 investigation into the painting using a battery of modern imaging techniques uncovered details about Vermeer’s methods and the makeup of his pigments, but not the young woman’s identity.
“I bring together the original The Girl with a Pearl Earring and the face of a Wayang puppet,” artist Rob de Heer told the AP, standing in front of a screen in the museum’s foyer where all of the winning submissions are displayed.
De Heer, who primarily works with mixed media, wanted to take an image from the Golden Age history of the Netherlands and combine it with one evoking its colonial legacy. Wayang puppets are a traditional form of theater in parts of Indonesia, which was ruled by the Netherlands until 1949.
His surrealist work is followed in the rolling display by a piece featuring the original girl’s face superimposed on an antique tea tin.
Other submissions include works by South Korean artist Nanan Kang, who used an ear of corn for the face; Georgian artist Nino Kavazauri, who reimagined a modern girl waiting at a bus stop with a cup of coffee; and Simon Chong, a Welsh animator, who works on the popular television series “Bob’s Burgers” and created a girl in the show’s cartoon style.
This article was provided by The Associated Press.