Italian couple builds miniature museum for pet gerbils during lockdown

During coronavirus quarantine, Italian couple Filippo Lorenzin and Marianna Benetti built a miniature art museum for their nine-month-old gerbils, Pandoro and Tiramisu, in their London home. The museum features cardboard walls, wooden frames, and tiny paintings by Benetti that parody masterpieces like Klimt's The Kiss, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Munch's The Scream, all with gerbils as subjects. Lorenzin, an independent curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, created a video of the gerbils exploring the space, posted on Reddit, which went viral on Twitter. The museum includes details like benches, labels with QR codes, and a sign asking visitors not to chew the artworks. Lorenzin told The Art Newspaper, "It was fun to play with the white cube aesthetic and the raw energy of our gerbils." The project started as a dollhouse idea and became a digital sensation.