Is a second ‘Mona Lisa’ still special? What about the thousandth?

Winnie Wong, Asian American Research Center faculty affiliate, is featured in this Berkeley News story. As a graduate student at MIT, Wong had read about a Chinese village in The New York Times where thousands of artists painted replicas of famous artworks, like da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” or van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” in mass quantities. These paintings were then exported to Europe and the U.S., where they’d hang on the walls of hotels & restaurants. After years of research in the village, Wong believes the village offers profound insights into global art culture, which she now incorporates into her teaching. Her experience shows that what matters most might not be whether something is “authentic,” but how it’s experienced and discussed in real time.