Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer. An exhibition from the British Royal Collection
29 September 2016 – 8 January 2017
The Muaritshuis, The Hague
from the Mauritshuis website:
A royal visit from Great Britain: in the autumn of 2016, the Mauritshuis will exhibit a selection of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings from the British Royal Collection. The selection contains representations of daily life as depicted by painters of the Dutch Golden Age, and offers an exceptional chance to see over twenty masterpieces from the Royal Collection, the largest loan to a Dutch museum to date. The Royal Collection, held in trust by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, contains unique highlights from the oeuvres of famous painters such as Gerard ter Borch, Pieter de Hooch, Gabriel Metsu, and Jan Steen. The highlight of the exhibition is The Music Lesson by Johannes Vermeer.
http://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/discover/exhibitions/upcoming/
After trotting thousands upon thousands of miles around the globe during the restoration of the Mauritshuis, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring thought her performance would come to an end when she got home.
How wrong she was.
If I have translated the Dutch news dispatch correctly, the Mauritshuis staged a competition inspired by the Japanese Vermeer enthusiast Shin Ichi Fukuoka which called on other Vermeer enthusiasts to submit a photograph of their own living rooms that includes a reproduction of the iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring on one of its walls. The winner, so to speak, would have his or her living room reassembled on the premises of the Mauritshuis with the iconic picture incorporated, in the manner of photo stand-ins (once called carnival cutout) that are present in virtually every zoo, children’s museum and theme park in America. The lucky winner was recently announced on Mauritshuis Facebook page, and she is Elsa Oudshoorn.
Although I can’t quite grasp the sense of the Mauritshuis’ initiative, it would appear to be distantly related to the “win-an-evening-with-your-favorite-movie-star-or-starlet” competition of glamorous days gone bye. I have no idea what it would be like to sit in the reconstruction of my living room with a real Vermeer peeping through a hole, but I can imagine how deeply embarrassing it would be to have won the other type competition and have found oneself sitting across a dining table with a Hollywood starlet who would rather be anywhere in the world except with one hers fans.
Those who read this blog regularly will have sooner or later understood that my own enthusiasm for the work of Vermeer stops more or less at building the Essential Vermeer, reporting “Vermeer news” and looking at Vermeer’s real pictures when life permits. And they will also have intuited that I do not subscribe to the “anything-that-draws-people-to-art-is-good” philosophy (see here, here and here). On the contrary.
So, my only hope is that I got the Mauritshuis story all wrong or that Vermeer was a very fun-loving man who wouldn’t have minded having his head (or the head of one of his pictures) stuck in a hole of a photo stand-in of a funny dinosaur or a old western jail.
Mauritshuis Opening on 27 June 2014
The Mauritshuis will open its doors on Friday 27 June 2014 after a two-year renovation.
The world famous painting collection, including three paintings by Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, The View of Delft and Diana and her Companions, will once again be displayed in the fully renovated and expanded Mauritshuis. After a celebratory opening, the museum will be open to the public for visit free of charge until midnight. The renovated Mauritshuis doubles its surface with an underground expansion into a building on the other side of the street. Still, little about the character of the museum will change. The appearance and unique homely atmosphere are preserved, thanks to the design of Hans van Heeswijk architects. The most obvious change is the relocation of the main entrance to the forecourt. Visitors will descend via the stairs or lift to a light foyer, connecting ‘old’ and ‘new’ underground. The new part, the Royal Dutch Shell Wing, will house the exhibition space, the brasserie and the museum shop. Furthermore, it will accommodate the educational Art Workshop, a library, and event rooms.
The museum has also rennovated its website and has added new high-resolution image is their Vermeer’s paintings which can be veiwed with a zoom feature or downloaded to one’s hard disk. The downloadable images are lower resolution than the zoom versions.
zoom features:
Girl with a Pearl Earring
View of Delft
Diana and her Compantions
downloads:
Girl with a Pearl Earring
View of Delft
Diana and her Compantions
Mauritshuis
Korte Vijverberg 8
2513 AB The Hague
P.O. Box 536
2501 CM The Hague
