Taylor Swift fans flock to German museum to see Ophelia painting

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Taylor Swift fans are driving a surge in popularity of a German museum exhibiting a portrait of the Shakespeare character Ophelia, recently reimagined in a song and music video from Swift's new album The Life of a Showgirl.

The Hessische Landesmuseum in the central German city of Wiesbaden saw hundreds more visitors than usual over the weekend, as fans hoped to see the real version of the painting that opens the music video for The Fate of Ophelia.

In the video, viewed more than 65 million times on Youtube, the painting comes alive, with Swift at its centre.

"We're really enjoying this attention - it's a lot of fun," museum spokesperson Susanne Hirschmann told the Associated Press.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday, Hirschmann added: "We are really astonished at the media is interested in this."

She said the rise in visitor numbers started last week, saying: "For us, it's a really great opportunity to bring people to the museum who don't know us yet, and also just to talk about the art."

Fans had realised the Friedrich Heyser painting was there when the team, noticing the "striking resemblance", put an announcement on their website inviting any Swift fans to attend a special tour.

The news then went viral online, the museum said.

Social media posts explaining the painting's whereabouts got thousands of likes, far higher than the hundred or so likes that most of its posts tend to get.

Hirschmann explained one family had travelled to the museum from the northern city of Hamburg, a five-hour drive away, while some of the visitors were Americans from an army base nearby.

In Hamlet, Ophelia, his wife, a young noblewoman from Denmark, goes mad and drowns.

While less well-known than John Everett Millais's painting of Ophelia, the portrait also depicts a woman in a long dress lying drowned in water, surrounded by flowers.

Hirschmann told the BBC that the scene depicted in the painting shows "the balance between life and death using fragile women", which "fascinated the artists of the time".

Alamy

The image is invoked by on Swift's album cover, which shows her partially submerged in water.

"We are surprised and delighted that Taylor Swift used this painting from the museum as inspiration for her video," museum director Andreas Henning told German news agency DPA.

"This is, of course, a great opportunity to attract people to the museum who don't know us yet."

The Life of a Showgirl secured the UK's biggest opening week of 2025, after selling 304,000 copies in the first seven days.

In the US, it earned more than four million equivalent album units in the United States in its opening week, according to Billboard, beating the record set by Adele with her album 25 in 2015.

The record is Swift's third album to top the UK album chart in 2025, following Lover (Live From Paris) in February and The Tortured Poets Department, when it returned to number one in April.

It is also the first studio album Swift has released since she announced her engagement to NFL star Travis Kelce in August and revealed in May that she had regained control over her back catalogue.