On the first day of the French May media trip, we dove straight into the world’s most famous painting: “La Joconde” also known as the Mona Lisa. We had the absolute privilege of viewing the legendary artwork by Leonardo da Vinci in person on a Tuesday—the Louvre’s weekly day off—which meant no large crowds, near silence, and the chance to get as physically close as possible to the Mona Lisa. A representative from the museum gave us an impromptu lecture about the painting, explaining its history from conception until now, and providing valuable insight into the actual cultural significance of the piece. But this is not the typical experience for most people.
“People feel disappointed because they enter this room and it is crowded. It’s a very huge room, the biggest room in the Louvre, and you have huge canvases all around you. The biggest painting of the room, ‘The Wedding at Cana’, is just in front of the Mona Lisa, then you see this small lady alone on this big wall and you just don’t understand why this is the most famous picture in the world,” she said, setting the scene for what is the average person’s encounter with the Mona Lisa. “And so most people are obviously disappointed. When you enter the room, there is also a barrier so that people don’t get too close to [the painting]. But the intention of Leonardo is completely lost. It may be quite normal in the sense that [Mona Lisa] is a star—perhaps one of the biggest stars in the world—and you don’t get close to stars. You always watch stars from afar, and that was not what Leonardo wanted to do.”
An interrupted view of the Mona Lisa.
Photo: Alyanna Raissa J. Payos
Karena Lam gets a closer look at the Mona Lisa.
Photo: Courtesy of French May Arts Festival
The Mona Lisa serves as the focal point of the 2026 French May Arts Festival’s flagship exhibition at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, “HKJC Series: Meet Mona Lisa & Portraying The Renaissance”. Co-produced by the Louvre Museum and Grand Palais Immersif, the dual-part exhibition delves into the depths of the iconic painting and strives, in a way, to bring audiences closer to it than would ever be possible at its home in the Louvre. Designed to be a fully immersive experience that engages all the senses, Meet Mona Lisa is divided into six comprehensive chapters that hone in on different facets of the Mona Lisa—‘The Science of Painting’, ‘A Portrait Defying Convention’, ‘Decoding Mona Lisa’, ‘Cult of a Quiet Celebrity’, ‘The Crime That Made Her Famous’, and ‘Mona Lisa Mania’— and features a range of cutting-edge technologies with tactile, interactive, and playful installations that encourage active audience participation.
Everyone’s journey begins with the Prelude, an enigmatic, almost cinematic encounter that brings 23-year-old Lisa Gherardini—the subject of the Mona Lisa painting—to life. Guests enter through a corridor of layered projections on wafty gauze screens depicting shifting Leonardian landscapes, with replicas of Renaissance statues from the Louvre collection nestled between the layers. The corridor widens into a dark room, where a hologram of the Mona Lisa appears amid an optical theatre. This time, she emerges not just as a visual image, but as a voice, introducing guests to the exhibition and narrating her story.
“The Mona Lisa immersive has been shown in various venues in the past, but for this very project, we have decided to completely recraft it,” shares Isabelle Jouve, Senior Creative Producer at Grand Palais Immersif. “Prelude is a very important installation, it’s a new setup that we didn’t have in the previous exhibition. Very importantly, Mona Lisa has her own voice, so she welcomes you to the exhibition, she tells you who she is, where she comes from. And that creates, we think, a very strong bond between the visitor and the artwork.”
Beyond the Prelude, other highly informative and interactive technologies throughout the exhibition include the envisioned voice of Mona Lisa in three languages that accompanies and tours you through the space; a digital magnifier that is used to learn more about the science behind the painting via infrared and LiDar scans; digital touchscreen games to review the timeline of events surrounding Mona Lisa; a 360-degree mapping room where guests become engulfed by an overwhelming volume of Mona Lisa-inspired works displayed across the walls and floor; and a “photobooth” installation that enables one to step into the Mona Lisa painting and take her place in the scene. Through the use of such features, Meet Mona Lisa far transcends the typical viewing experience of the painting itself, and fosters a sense of active learning for all ages.
Meanwhile, the second half of the exhibition “Portraying The Renaissance”, curates an experience more akin to a traditional art gallery experience. A selection of Renaissance paintings and artefacts from the Musée national de la Renaissance and Pinacoteca Ambrosiana contextualise the artistic, cultural and intellectual era in which the Mona Lisa emerged. Local artworks from the Hong Kong Heritage Museum are interwoven throughout to form a meaningful cross-cultural dialogue.
The highlights of “Portraying The Renaissance” however, are exceptionally reproduced engravings and sculptures by the Grand Palais RMN Ateliers, an over 200-year-old French institution with the only legal authorization to take direct moulds and prints from original artworks in France’s most prestigious museums. Crafted by the country’s finest artisans, the difference between these sculpture replicas and most museum objects is that these can be touched, creating a rare opportunity to connect with art in new ways.
Karena Lam visiting the Grand Palais RMN Ateliers.
Photo: Courtesy of French May Arts Festival
Karena Lam, now in her 14th year as the French May Festival’s ambassador, shared her thoughts on the exhibition saying, “Not everyone can access the Louvre to see the real Mona Lisa, so I think this immersive is a very good introduction [to the arts] for the audience in Hong Kong and for families. There’s a lot of educational information and kids will be familiar with digital aspects like the touchscreen. It’s a fun way of learning more about the Mona Lisa, about the Renaissance, about Leonardo. Then, of course, we have 25 pieces from the Grand Palais RMN Ateliers, so it’s good to have something that’s tactile to see. Being a potter myself, I feel like having or doing things with our hands is something very precious.”
She continued to stress on the value of such experiences, reflecting on how art has impacted her life as an actress. “I feel like it’s very important that art should be more integrated into the education system; academics are important, but I have always felt that liberal arts is important too because it really touches something that’s unspoken of. It seeps into the unconscious, and you bring what’s unconscious to a conscious level. Especially now in this digital era, I feel the importance of art.”
“I always go back to art because I love the arts. When I’m acting for example, I would be on set doing this really sad scene, and all of a sudden, imagery just pops in the back of my head. For example, it could be Magritte’s ‘The Lovers’, and I feel very strongly about the emotions from that painting so I bring it into a scene in the movie. It’s really good to have this exposure [to art]; it just affects you somehow, quietly in your day to day life.”
Lam’s deep-rooted relationship with art is completely transparent. Throughout our trip in Paris, she is constantly engaged in conversation with the performers, institutional representatives and artistic directors, openly sharing her feelings and asking questions filled with sincerity. Having never finished high school, she believes that such intense cultural immersions have been essential in her pursuit of lifelong education.
“Meeting all these artists and curators and directors who went through so many years of education and have so much experience, has always been something that I look forward to,” she said. “For the past 14 years, what I’ve learned is just to really not have any judgments, be open and be a good listener. So it’s been very fulfilling.”
Lam hopes that initiatives like the French May Festival can help to preserve these childlike sensibilities, and foster a greater sense of art’s importance within a household. “I’m always thinking for the kids,” she shares. “Since they were very young, I’ve read all about the arts with my daughters. I’m always looking for children’s books about the arts or about the importance of play. There’s a very playful artist that I really like called Hervé Tullet. Bringing him over is always something that I’ve wanted to do. He has children’s books, and also these workshops that make you feel like you’re a kid again. I feel we should do more for kids, because it’s always the kids impacting the adults, the parents.”
Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: “Meet Mona Lisa & Portraying The Renaissance”
When: May 1 to July 27, 2026
Where: 1/F, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, 1 Man Lam Road, Sha Tin
Ticketing: Free; hk.heritage.museum
Editor
Alyanna Raissa J. PayosCredit
Lead image: Courtesy of French May Arts Festival
