Large crowds filled the Hong Kong Heritage Museum on Friday as the “Meet Mona Lisa & Portraying the Renaissance” exhibition opened to the public on the Labour Day holiday.
The exhibition, part of the annual French May Arts Festival, features multimedia immersive installations that introduce the history of the Mona Lisa, and diverse forms of Renaissance artworks, including four Leonardo da Vinci manuscripts.
The multimedia section “Meet Mona Lisa” was produced by the Musée du Louvre and the Grand Palais Immersif in Paris.
Most borrowed exhibits from France and Italy are making their Hong Kong debut, including The Crucifixion by Noël Bellemare, The Rebellious Slave by Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Luca Penni’s The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist.
Visitors crowded the galleries with long queues forming for interactive activities and the Mona Lisa’s “self-narrated” audiovisual walking tour by midday.
Samuel Tang, 30, and Mavie Yu, 25, said they came to the exhibition today specifically for the Mona Lisa.
Tang thinks the multimedia immersive experiences of the Mona Lisa's animations are more interesting than “regular stationary exhibitions”.
He described the interactive elements as engaging, comparing the experience to watching a movie.
“Usually we interpret the artworks on our own, but here the artworks break the fourth wall by talking to us and guiding us through the experience,” Tang said.
The first-person narrative in the storytelling helped her understand the Mona Lisa’s backstory thoroughly, Yu said.
Pursy Law and Waybe Tsang, both in their forties, brought their son for a family-bonding holiday after learning about the show on social media.
“We want to bring our child to experience the cultural influence of the Mona Lisa,” Law said.
“Everyone knows about the beauty of the Mona Lisa, but many are unaware of its story of being stolen,” she added.
She found the video explaining the work’s background interesting and informative.
Law and Tsang said they had seen the video presentation. Tsang described the experience of being surrounded by screens “quite sensational”.
Tsang said the interactive “timeline arrangement game” is a good narration in presenting the full story of the Mona Lisa.
“It has shown when it was drawn, when it was stolen, and when it was returned back to Louvre,” he said.
Other interactive pieces include a portrait drawing session where visitors can paint and project their own portraits of the Mona Lisa in the gallery.
At the opening talk, Vincent Delieuvin, curator from the Louvre, highlighted how the Mona Lisa’s current appearance differs from its original state.
“The Mona Lisa is over 500 years old and has changed over time,” Delieuvin said.
He explained that aging varnish layers—clear coatings put on top of a painting—have darkened the painting over centuries.
The work has not been restored recently and oxidised varnishes have given the Mona Lisa a yellowed tone, he added.
Martin Roberts, 37, from the UK, said Venus and Cupid by Jacob de Backer appeared the most impressive to him. “When it comes to artwork, I think it’s the connection of humanity that draws me.”
“I grew up a little bit in Greece, so the artwork in a Greek mythology context gives me a homely feeling,” he added.
The free exhibition runs from May 1 to July 27 at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.
French May Arts Festival is a major cultural festival in Hong Kong that has run for over three decades, presenting a wide range of programs across visual arts, music, dance, theatre, and cinema.
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