A Jeff Koons Dolly Parton meme by @jerrygogosian (courtesy of @jerrygogosian)

When Dolly Parton posted a grid of four photos of herself labeled “LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Tinder” — ingeniously captioned “Get you a woman who can do it all” — she may not have predicted the extent of the Internet’s fascination with grouping things into categories. The meme is officially having a viral moment, with celebrities from Mindy Kaling to Janet Jackson creating their own interpretations of themselves, their pets, or inanimate objects as each of the four social media platforms. 

And, since art is but an imitation of life, museums, auction houses, and artists have stepped up to the challenge, too. “Get you a museum that can do it all,” said MFA Boston and London’s Natural History Museum in the captions to their Dolly Parton memes. Two versions by the anonymous Instagram account and art world éminence grise @JerryGogosian flaunt the many guises of Klaus Biesenbach and Larry Gagosian; another tells a brief history of Jeff Koons’s career, from shiny, high-powered $91 million rabbit sculpture (LinkedIn) to shapeless mound of Play-Doh (Facebook, obviously.)

In its ongoing and genuinely admirable effort to try to make Old Master paintings cool, Sotheby’s shows us “the many faces” of their upcoming Masters Weeks sales, and the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico highlights important works from their permanent collection.

Our favorite art-themed #DollyPartonChallenge memes below.

A Larry Gagosian Dolly Parton meme by @jerrygogosian (courtesy of @jerrygogosian)

A Klaus Biesenbach Dolly Parton meme by Jerry Gogosian. (courtesy of @jerrygogosian)

Valentina Di Liscia is the News Editor at Hyperallergic. Originally from Argentina, she studied at the University of Chicago and is currently working on her MA at Hunter College, where she received the...

4 replies on “The Art World Has Discovered the Dolly Parton Meme Challenge”

  2. Wow, museums can really do it all…. except include women artists. Apparently women need to be naked to get on social media too. Unless they are Dolly Parton, of course.

  3. Man, look at how white these collections are and/or how white the social media managers are at these institutions. Ban all white people!

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