Imagine yourself wandering the halls of your favorite museum when suddenly you see it—a portrait of someone who looks exactly like you, immortalized in an ornate gold frame. If you’ve been lucky enough to spot your art-history doppelgänger hanging on the walls of a hallowed institution, you’re not alone—just ask the finalists in the recent Vincent van Gogh lookalike contest.
Recently, Bored Panda, a Buzzfeed-esque website with an artistic bent, posted a selection of spot-on images of people posing in front of portraits that could easily be their doubles. Does the canvas show a long-lost relative or a past life? There’s no way to tell, but the resemblances are downright uncanny.
Surprising exactly no one, the project has quickly gone viral. The model has proven its drawing power—on the Internet and beyond. Consider the popularity of Rob Pruitt’s contribution to this year’s Art Basel in Basel, which paired photographs of major art world players with images of their celebrity twins. (Think Gavin Brown and Mark Ruffalo, and Okwui Enwezor and Usher.)
Rob Pruitt’s celebrity lookalikes series at Art Basel Unlimited.
If the photos leave you with a case of doppelgänger-envy, fear not: There is an upcoming exhibition at the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec, “My 2,000-Year-Old Double,” which uses facial recognition software to identify people who look like works from the Greco-Roman and Egyptian collections of the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva and the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art. The project is the brainchild of Québec photographer François Brunelle, who plans to exhibit 30 black-and-white photographs featuring the best matches—as determined by an algorithm. (The show will be on view October 24, 2018–May 12, 2019.)
In the meantime, keep an eye out next time you’re at the Met—the next face you see on the walls could be your own!
See Bored Panda’s best art doppelgängers below:
A museum doppelgänger shared by Bored Panda.
A museum doppelgänger shared by Bored Panda.
A museum doppelgänger shared by Bored Panda.
A museum doppelgänger shared by Bored Panda.
A museum doppelgänger shared by Bored Panda.
A museum doppelgänger shared by Bored Panda.
A museum doppelgänger shared by Bored Panda.
A museum doppelgänger shared by Bored Panda.
A museum doppelgänger shared by Bored Panda.