The Etruscan Boar Vessel 600-500 BC, which may be the most-memed piece of ceramic pottery in the world, is back on display at the Cleveland Museum in Ohio after a long spell spent in storage.
But the Boar Vessel isn't only in Ohio — it's also now online.
On the museum's official site, you can visit a new page for the piece, rotate the boar vessel in a 3D simulation and even read about its provenance from the comfort of your own home.
In case you don't recall this seemingly mundane carafe, the Boar Vessel went viral in the mid-2010s as a kind of surreal meme, with posters praising and promoting the squat, intricately carved work of allegedly Etruscan art.
The Etruscans were an ancient people that lived in Italy and were eventually conquered by the Romans beginning in the late 4th century BC.
However, like many things in Ohio, there's more to this story than meets the eye. As it turns out, the boar vessel may not actually be from 600-500 BC like researchers originally thought.
More recent analyses of the Boar Vessel in 2021 concluded that it was likely made in the 20th century and pawned off as a more ancient artifact.
This, apparently, was a common practice in which highly trained art historians and artists routinely made forgeries and tried to sell them. If these findings are correct, the Boar Vessel is actually not Etruscan at all, and the artifact that Tumblr fell madly in love with is an elaborate scam.
In the museum's new ArtLens exhibit, Boar Vessel is paired with other objects including a Javanese piggy bank dating from the 14th century (which is, apparently, not a forgery).
Some works of art are eternal, and it's clear that even if Boar Vessel is a forgery, it undeniably brought joy to many for reasons that may be difficult to articulate but are extremely valid.
