Museo Nacional de Arte INBA

Mexican art museums post a lot of weird GIFs on their social media accounts.

I’ve noticed this because I’ve purged my Facebook newsfeed (in an attempt to de-stress from American political bickering) of everything except Spanish-language art pages. I highly recommend this strategy, if for no reason other than the constant stream of GIFs.

This one, for example, is from the Facebook of Museo Nacional de Arte INBA. What is going on here? We see the famed painter Doménikos Theotokópoulos (better known as “El Greco”) as an old-timey baseball player with contemporary sneakers and dragonfly wings. He’s barging in on “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet, and that painting’s famed nude seems bemusedly intrigued. He has three hands, presumably for his sword, baseball bat, and catcher’s mitt (just what position is he playing here?). I envy the art history students of the future who will get to study masterpieces like this.

Mostly, I’m hoping Jaimie Warren recreates this for her meme-inspired “Art History Series”.