Let there be light: Will Caravaggio bring the Asia Society out of the shadows?
As Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus goes on show at the Asia Society, Fionnuala McHugh wonders whether the 1606 masterpiece will help bring the organisation to the fore
On January 8, 1963, a painting went on show in Washington's National Gallery of Art. It had crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Paris in its own cabin on board the SS France, accompanied by nine French guards and two officials from the Louvre museum.
At its unveiling, American president John F. Kennedy (who had just survived the Cuban missile crisis but was still fighting the cold war and anxious to have France as an ally) said, "Politics and art, the life of action and the life of thought, the world of events and the world of imagination, are one." In the following weeks, two million Americans would queue up in Washington, and later New York, to have a look at an Italian merchant's wife who'd been dead for more than 400 years. It was after the stupendous success of the Mona Lisa exhibition that museums realised "art" plus "diplomacy" could equal "blockbuster".
"I remember seeing a documentary about the arrival of the Mona Lisa in New York," says Alice Mong, executive director of the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre, one recent afternoon. "How Mrs Kennedy had appealed to [French president] General de Gaulle, the context of its arrival in the 1960s, all that hoopla … and I remember thinking, 'Wouldn't it be interesting to do that here?'"
Now she's having her moment - not with a Leonardo da Vinci but with the work of another Italian genius. From Wednesday, the Asia Society will be exhibiting one of the world's most famous paintings: Supper at Emmaus, painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in 1606.
Watch: Caravaggio's HK$640 million masterpiece makes debut in Asia
Normally, this masterpiece resides in the Pinacoteca di Brera, in Milan, from where it rarely ventures. When Croatia joined the European Union last July, however, it was lent with suitable diplomatic fanfare - plus insurance cover of €60 million (HK$640 million) - to Zagreb's Museum of Arts and Crafts, in order, as Italy's ambassador put it, "to emphasise the excellent relations between the two countries". (Italy and Croatia have a painful shared history.)