An earring in a painting has been turned into an actual earring—for the second time.
Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring will be on view at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka from August 21 to September 27, as part of the exhibition "Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring: Masterpieces of 17th-Century Dutch Painting, A Miraculous Return to Japan." The show is organized by the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, The Asahi Shimbun, and Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The exhibition runs without closure days and requires timed-entry tickets.
MIKIMOTO is the special sponsor for this run. It's not the first time the brand has tied itself to this particular painting—when Girl with a Pearl Earring last visited Japan in 2012, MIKIMOTO sponsored that exhibition too. Now, over a decade later, the painting has returned, and the brand is once again answering an earring with earrings.
The three commemorative pearl earrings this time are crafted from Akoya pearls, diamonds, and 18K white gold, priced between ¥7.7 million and ¥17.6 million. Those numbers alone signal that this isn't a souvenir-tier collaboration but a serious study in craftsmanship built around a single painting. All three designs go on sale August 1 at the Ginza 4-chome flagship store, with one design also available simultaneously at the Osaka Umeda store—a deliberate nod to the city hosting the exhibition, tying the sponsorship to something tangible on the ground.
The exhibition is held on the 5th floor gallery of the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka. Pricing and sales details are subject to official announcements from the brand and the museum.
