MoMA Makes Bid For Virality With Marcel Duchamp Lookalike Contest

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New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will make a bid for virality later this week when it unveils a new addition to its events programming: the lookalike contest.

To celebrate its Marcel Duchamp retrospective, which opened on 12 April and runs until 22 August, the institution has invited visitors to spend Thursday evening (30 April) enjoying DJ sets, choreography and pop-up bars—all while dressed as the French-American artist or his alter ego, Rrose Sélavy.

The MoMA event perhaps aims to capitalise on the viral moments created by other lookalike contests, often held in public spaces in major cities. The trend seemingly kicked off in October 2024, when YouTuber Anthony Po hosted a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest that drew huge crowds to New York City’s Washington Square Park.

Other famous names that have inspired lookalike contests include actors Paul Mescal, Jeremy Allen White and Zendaya, and even Luigi Mangione, the jailed suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

However, unlike these events, MoMA’s competition invites lookalikes who resemble a historical figure—or, indeed, two figures. MoMA states on its website that Duchamp’s reinventive spirit and “breadth of creative expression” will serve as inspiration for the contest.

Duchamp’s alter ego, Rose Sélavy, first appeared in 1920. The second “r” was added to her name a year later, after she lent her signature to Francis Picabia’s collage L’Oeil Cacodylate (1921). 

The lookalike contest will take place in MoMA’s lobby on the evening of 30 April, as part of the museum’s evening event series, Artist Party. The museum’s website describes the evening, which costs $15 USD (£11) to attend, as set to be filled with “pop-up performances and vibrant social exchange”. 

However, prospective revellers beware: the museum has also published a decisive list of rules for the event, including a ban on masks, hats or facepaint “that conceal the face or alter a person’s recognisable likeness”, and on any costume that extends more than 30cm (12 inches) beyond the body or above the head. 

While likely rooted in the safety of visitors and works alike, these restrictions set MoMA’s event apart from earlier grassroots incarnations of the lookalike-contest trend, which have usually been advertised via flyers and taken place in free-to-attend public spaces.

To date, the lookalike contest has been a tried-and-tested pull for younger crowds, but whether MoMA can replicate this fast track to viral success against the backdrop of a canonical modernist survey remains to be seen.