Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today?

What's the advantage of seeing an original piece of art over a serviceable replica? Especially in the case where the "original" is a print, one of dozens.

Obviously "serviceable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, a replica might simply not be very good, might not capture some vital characteristic of the thing which makes it a great work.

But otherwise, it's basically that the knowledge of how important and significant this work is puts the viewer in a more receptive frame of mind, right?

To be clear, that's not nothing. I of course know firsthand how much that affects the impact of a painting, museums and galleries care a lot about how they display their collection. But is that it?

I agree with you that replicas can be great.

Last year, I went to Otsuka museum of art[1] where they have life-size replicas of famous paintings (including the Sistine chapel), and it was great.

Before going, I was weirdly hung up about going to somewhere to see "replicas" instead of the real thing. But once I got there, I loved every second of it. All the artworks were replicated with careful detail in life size, so I felt like I wasn't missing much. In fact, I felt like I was enjoying it more! There were no crowds. I could get as close to the artworks as I wanted to. The lighting was great, since they didn't have to worry about damaging the paints. It was more engaging for the kids as they could free touch some of the replicated potteries etc.

It is a bit out of the way, but I'd highly recommend anyone going to Japan to check out that museum and maybe the onaruto bridge [2] on the way

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ctsuka_Museum_of_Art

[2] https://www.japan.travel/national-parks/parks/setonaikai/see...