The Dutch town of Nijmegen is proud of two current art exhibitions in New York City with a strong connection to Holland's oldest city.

Since January 22 the exposition "Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves" has been on display the Morgan Library & Museum. On March 1 the Metropolitan Museum of Art will open "The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry".

Both shows display illuminated manuscripts with a connection to Nijmegen. The book in the Morgan library was created for Katherina van Kleef, a Nijmegen noble woman, the other manuscript was illustrated by three brothers from the city. According to Vanuit New York.com the major of Nijmegen, Thom de Graaf, will join a group of re-enactment actors on a trip to New York.

Hours of Catherine of Cleves

A 'book of hours', getijdenboek in Dutch, is devotional book that was popular in the Middle Ages. According to the Morgan Library, the Hours of Catherine of Cleves is the most important and lavish of all Dutch manuscripts as well as one of the most beautiful among the Morgan's collection. "Commissioned by Catherine of Cleves around 1440 and illustrated by an artist known as the Master of Catherine of Cleves, the work is an illustrated prayer book containing devotions that Catherine would recite throughout the day. The manuscript's two volumes have been disbound for the exhibition, which features nearly a hundred miniatures".

The Limbourg Brothers

"The Belles Heures (1405–1408/9) of Jean de Berry, a treasure of The Cloisters collection, is one of the most celebrated and lavishly illustrated manuscripts in this country. Because it is currently unbound, it is possible to exhibit all of its illuminated pages as individual leaves, a unique opportunity never to be repeated. The exhibition will elucidate the manuscript, its artists—the young Franco-Netherlandish Limbourg Brothers—and its patron, Jean de France, duc de Berry. A select group of precious objects from the same early fifteenth-century courtly milieu will place the manuscript in the context of the patronage of Jean de Berry and his royal family, the Valois."

Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves
Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY
January 22 through May 2, 2010

The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
March 2 through June 13, 2010