Tableau vivant memes in lockdown: virality and vitality

The #gettymuseumchallenge arose on Instagram during the Covid-19 pandemic, challenging Instagrammers to reproduce artworks with household objects. The article tracks the relationship between the meme and the tableau vivant as a genre in theater and photography, analyzing the hybridization of a longstanding art tradition and characteristic forms of self-representation on Instagram during the pandemic. The quali-quantitative approach, based on a statistical description of the photographs and texts published online and on an analysis of the singularity of the images produced, sheds light on the paradoxical vitality of the viral challenge.