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See Inside the Reopened Rembrandt House Museum, Which Now Displays Nearly a Third More of the Dutch Golden Age Master’s Stuff
Last week, the Rembrandt House Museum reopened in Amsterdam after a four-month closure, offering 30 percent more Rembrandt in the building where the artist lived and worked—plus a forthcoming artist residency program that harkens back to the history of students studying there under the Dutch Golden Age master. “This is the only surviving place of art […]
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Rijksmuseum’s Vermeer Experience is Incomplete Without a Visit to the Dutch Master’s Home City of Delft
It was a chilly morning as I found myself standing at Oude Langendijk 25 in the Dutch city of Delft, the hometown of Johannes Vermeer and his wife Catharina Bolnes. Here, the famed artist created the majority of his small oeuvre of 37 known paintings, many of which are now on view at Rijksmuseum, in […]
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Studio Visit: Dutch Textile Designer Hella Jongerius Is Cherishing Her Paper Archives and Enjoying Some Good Soup
The acclaimed Dutch industrial designer Hella Jongerius has been busy. While working with major clients such as IKEA and KLM airlines, Jongerius is also a thriving artist whose textile works are informed by her technical proficiency with woven materials, and her deep understanding of the cultural history of fabrics. Her berlin-based studio, Jongeriuslab, where she […]
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Ever Wonder What a 17th-Century Dutch Canal Smells Like? No? Well a New Show Invites You to Sniff the Odors of Art History Anyway
Seventeenth-century painter and biographer Arnold Houbraken records that Rembrandt once told a studio visitor to stand back from a canvas and its disagreeable paint fumes. Whether Rembrandt used his warning as a pretext to corral viewers to optimal viewing distances, or believed that paint—often made of noxious elements like lead—posed a risk, is uncertain. But […]
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The Dutch Government Just Promised to Return Any Stolen Colonial-Era Objects in Its Collections Back to Their Countries of Origin
The government of the Netherlands has agreed to put in place guidelines that could make it a global leader in restituting colonial-era objects. The guidelines follow recommendations in a report issued by an advisory commission led by experts from the nation’s leading museums. The document, published in October, called for a “recognition that an injustice was […]