What Is Imitating Whom?

A hot, muggy, sticky day in Beantown.  We decided to amble about in the Museum of Fine Arts this afternoon, and it was a perfect day to do so.  It was surprisingly uncrowded!

We saw a photographic exhibit entitled In The Wake:  Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11, which documented reactions to both the devastating tsunami that occurred then as well as the ensuing nuclear disaster at Fukushima.  I found it depressing, and curiously difficult to engage with.  Maybe it was just my state of mind.

After a very pleasant and leisurely lunch, we wandered around the North American Wing, admiring the John Singer Sargents and other beautiful paintings (especially Thomas Sully's charming portrait of a young boy, The Torn Hat --one of my favourite paintings at the MFA).  The painting in my photograph is called Museum Epiphany III by the artist Warren Prosperi, which was unveiled at the museum in 2012.  It is hung in the very gallery it depicts, directly in front of the statue the little girl is gazing at.  You get a wonderful sense of dissonance as you stand there, taking in both the statue and the painting ... is Art imitating Life ... or is Life imitating Art?