Pop Icon Taylor Swift Fans Flood German Art Gallery to Experience Famous Ophelia Artwork
Devoted followers of Taylor Swift are generating a significant increase in popularity at a German museum that houses a painting of Shakespeare's heroine Ophelia, newly featured in a track and music video from Swift's new record "The recent musical project".
The cultural institution in the central Germany's city of Wiesbaden saw dozens additional visitors than usual over the past weekend, as Swifties wished to view the actual depiction of the portrait that begins the video for "the recent track".
In the visual piece, which has been viewed more than 65 thousand times on the video platform, the artwork transforms, with the artist at its center.
"We truly appreciate this focus - it's a lot of fun," an institution representative stated.
The representative mentioned that one family had come from the upper German urban center of this major city, a lengthy trip distant, while some of the visitors were Americans from a local U.S. base.
The spokesperson explained that Swifties realized the historical painting - estimated to date to the turn of the century - was there when the museum team, noticing the resemblance, published an announcement on their digital site encouraging any Swift fans to join a special guided visit.
The story then became popular on the internet, the gallery said.
Online updates describing the painting's location received many thousands of positive reactions, far higher than the hundred or so of likes that many of its content usually receive.
In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia, his love interest, a young aristocrat from this nation, goes mad and drowns.
While less well-known than John Everett Millais's portrait of the same character, the artwork also depicts a lady in a long dress lying submerged in a body of water, surrounded by blossoms.
The picture is invoked on Swift's release packaging, which depicts her incompletely submerged in liquid.
"We are amazed and pleased that the artist employed this portrait from the museum as inspiration for her music video," a gallery head commented.
"It represents, of course, a excellent possibility to attract people to the institution who don't know us so far."
"Swift's new album" earned the Britain's greatest first week of this year, after distributing 304,000 albums in the initial one week.
In the US, it generated more than 4 thousand corresponding album units in the U.S. in its opening week, according to industry reports, beating the record held by the British singer with her record "25" in 2015.
The record is Taylor Swift's third project to lead the UK rankings in this year, following "Lover (Live From Paris)" in early this year and "The Tortured Poets Department", when it reappeared to number one in recently.
It is furthermore the initial studio album Swift has issued since she announced her planned marriage to athlete Travis Kelce in recently and disclosed in earlier that she had retrieved rights over her previous work.