The Holland Museum in Holland, Michigan, houses an extensive collection of Dutch paintings. The Dutch Galleries of the Museum showcases many 17th to 20th century Dutch paintings and more than one hundred and seventy other cultural objects, from fine furniture, Delftware and silver to original Dutch costumes
Tomorrow, March 27th, two new paintings will added to the Galleries. One is a Willem Kalf kitchen still life, and the other is an untitled work, referred to internally as ‘The Drinking Man’, attributed to Adriaen Brouwer.
To celebrate the addition of the paintings a local author created a brief play inspired by these and other paintings in the Gallery. The play and “Dutch Art Comes Alive” event make up the ceremony around these two paintings being added to the gallery. The museum will have a a reception that day as well. Thea Grigsby, the Executive Director, is the resident Dutch art expert and will provide some insight into the paintings in the form of a short talk.
The Adriaen Brouwer was donated to the Museum by Eleanor DeKruif from Zeeland (wife of noted microbiologist Paul DeKruif); the Willem Kalf was donated by the Beekhuis Foundation. The paintings are not new to the museum -- the Adriaen Brouwer was donated in 1979 -- but this is the first time the works go on display.
An art exhibition in Hartford, Connecticut temporary reunites two works of Frans Hals and other pairs of paintings. The show, "Reunited Masterpieces", displays 10 pairs of paintings that were originally created together but over time were sold to different collectors and museums. The intimate exhibition is worth a visit to the Wadsworth Atheneum. Three of the pairs on display are by Dutch painters.
The works by Frans Hals are portraits of Joseph Coymans and his wife, Dorothea Berck; he was 52, she 51 when works were created in 1644. His portrait belongs to the Wadsworth, while her's traveled north from the Baltimore Museum of Art to join him. The two have been reunited only once before, in a show in Hals' hometown, Haarlem, the Netherlands, in 1962.
The Wadsworth Atheneum acquired a painting of Adam by Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) in 2004. The corresponding Eve belongs to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg, France. A New York Times review describes the differences between the two paintings:
"Some of the paintings in the pairs appear extremely different, partly because of different conservation methods, Dr. Zafran, the curator, explained. The portrait of Adam remains fresh, pink and luminous, while Eve appears older and more weathered, with a light coating of grime and crackling on the surface."
A third pair of Dutch paintings, with very elaborate frames, is of the hand of Johannes Verkolje de Elder. His 1674 portraits of Johan de la Faille and his wife Margaretha Delff both belong to the Wadsworth. Shortly after the museum bought Johan's portrait in 1982 it became aware of the accompanying painting of his wife and purchased it a year later.
The permanent collection of Wadsforth Atheneum contains several other Dutch works including a Rembrandt and Ruysdael's "View on Bloemendaal".
Yesterday we made a roadtrip to the capitol of Connecticut, Hartford. We visited the Wadsforth Atheneum to see an exhibition on 'reunited paintings'.
The weather was great and it was fun to drive through New York state and Connecticut. We had lunch in Mount Kisco, a friendly town and on our way back we had dinner there as well.
The exibition was quite nice: 10 pairs of paintings that were painted together, but over the years were sold separately to different collectors and museums and were now reunited.
In the regular collection of the museum there were a number of Dutch paintings including a work by Jacob Ruisdael, "View on Bloemendaal".
As we wrote earlier, this week is the Dutch Art Now art fair in New York City. On Friday evening there was a party at the National Arts Club which drew a large crowd of art lovers.
In the first two weeks of March there will be an art fair with Dutch art galleries and Dutch artists at the National Arts Club in New York.
The event, named Dutch Art Now, will be held during the Armory Arts Week, when New York attracts art lovers and experts from around the world with art events all over town.
The official opening will be on Tuesday March 2 by Dutch Consul General Gajus Scheltema and on Friday March 5 there will be a Dutch night with drinks and a Dutch bite.
Dutch Art Now is an initiative of the Amsterdam based Fair Foundation and is supported by Consulaat Generaal van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden & Witzenhausen Gallery AMS|NY.
Dutch Art Now, National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, NYC
March 3 through March 14 http://www.goingdutch.us
Southern California is home to the third-largest assemblage of Rembrandt paintings in the United States. "The Golden Age in the Golden State" is the fitting title of one of the current exhibitions that display Rembrandt van Rijn's work in California this month. A number of museums coordinated their shows in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Marino.
One of the highlights is "Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference" in The Getty Museum. This exhibition features drawings by 15 of Rembrandt's pupils in close comparison to drawings by the master himself. The show also features works of other Dutch painters taught by or inspired by Rembrandt such as Ferdinand Bol and Nicolaes Maes.
There are currently seven temporary exhibitions in Southern California:
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
An exhibition with biblical engravings and woodcuts by Dutch and Flemish artists opens today in Atlanta, Georgia after a successful display in the Museum of Biblical Art in New York.
The Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University presents Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century, a collection of approximately 80 works. The exhibition explores the ways in which printed illustrations of Biblical and other religious themes supplemented and magnified the texts they accompanied during a period of dramatic religious and political upheaval. Featured artists include Lucas van Leyden, Maarten van Heemskerck, Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert, and Hieronymus Wierix.
Illustrations are on loan from 13 institutions including the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Antwerp’s Plantin Museum, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The exhibition was earlier on display in the Museum of Biblical Art in New York and the New York Times wrote a glowing review about it:
"What remains undeniable [...] is the ability of Dutch printmakers to measure the heights and plumb the depths of the European soul."
Art in the 16th century helped the faithful to visualize and remember Bible stories but it also served to interpret these stories and to affirm church doctrine. The exhibition and catalog essays discuss the various aspects of this relationship between church and art. The New York Times:
"While some viewers may be fascinated by the scholarly issues and biblical themes that the exhibition so adroitly frames, the pictorial and narrative excitement will captivate many others. Among a series of dramatic scenes engraved by Philips Galle in 1565 is one showing soldiers tossing the accusers of Daniel into the lions’ den, a rocky hole in the ground. The hyperactive choreography of writhing, half-naked men and ravenous beasts — vivified by the syncopating play of light and shadow and the Michelangeloesque draftsmanship — is almost comically horrifying."
Michael C. Carlos Museum, Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century http://www.carlos.emory.edu/scripture
Through January 24, 2010
Last weekend the exhibit Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914 opened for the public in the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, GA. With over 70 paintings the exhibition examines the work of forty-three American painters drawn to Holland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:
"Dutch Utopia includes works by artists who remain celebrated today, such as Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, John Twachtman, and John Singer Sargent, along with painters admired in their own time but less well-known now, including accomplished women like Elizabeth Nourse and Anna Stanley, as well as George Hitchcock, Gari Melchers, and Walter MacEwen, who built international reputations with salon pictures of Dutch landscapes and costumed figures. These artists were among hundreds of Americans who traveled to the Netherlands between 1880 and 1914 to paint and to study. Some lived in Holland for decades, while others stayed only a week or two; but most passed quickly through the major cities to small rural communities, where they created picturesque idylls on canvas."
According to GPB.org the exhibit took five years of planning and research and it is the largest collection of paintings by American artists of the Netherlands that has ever been assembled.
In conjunction with Dutch Utopia there is a separate exhibition in the museum on the works of Walter MacEwen, one of the most highly decorated American artists of the late nineteenth century. He is best known for his depictions of rural Dutch life:
"Early in his career, MacEwen had also opened a studio in Hattem – a quiet medieval village in the Dutch province of Gelderland, where he spent his summers. MacEwen’s exposure to the work of seventeenth-century Dutch masters, as well as to the artists of the contemporary Hague School, exerted a considerable impact upon his developing style, and agrarian village life in Hattem inspired dozens of Dutch genre paintings that would come to define MacEwen’s mature career."
Walter MacEwen: An American Expatriate Revisited, which features additional works from Mr. Starke’s collection as well as pieces from other private and public collections and nicely complements works on display in Dutch Utopia.
The exhibition will also travel to the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the Singer Laren Museum in the Netherlands.
Telfair Museums, Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914 http://telfair.org
through January 10, 2010 in Georgia.
Friday night was a busy night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Many people took the opportunity to see one of the world's most popular paintings, the Milkmaid (De Melkmeid) by Johannes Vermeer. Dutch in America visited the exhibition around of this work that was loaned to the Metropolitan Museum by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in honor of the NY400 celebrations.
The exhibition begin with copies of the 36 known Vermeer paintings, five of which are in the permanent collection of the Met. The next rooms in the small gallery show the six Vermeers along with other paintings from that era. The exhibition is curated by Walter Liedtke, an Vermeer expert and accompanying the show is a 36-page catalogue by Liedtke that takes an original look at this beautiful painting.
It's rare to see so many Vermeers close by each other: 9 in the same city (The Frick Collection, a few blocks up the street, also houses 3 Vermeers). Today NLNY had an interview with the Dutch Consul General Gajus Scheltema in New York, and it mentions that the exhibition is drawing about 6,000 visitors per day.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vermeer's Masterpiece The Milkmaid http://www.www.metmuseum.org
through November 29, 2009
The Holland Museum in Holland, Michigan, houses an extensive collection of Dutch paintings. The Dutch Galleries of the Museum showcases many 17th to 20th century Dutch paintings and more than one hundred and seventy other cultural objects, from fine furniture, Delftware and silver to original Dutch costumes
An art exhibition in Hartford, Connecticut temporary reunites two works of Frans Hals and other pairs of paintings. The show, "Reunited Masterpieces", displays 10 pairs of paintings that were originally created together but over time were sold to different collectors and museums. The intimate exhibition is worth a visit to the Wadsworth Atheneum. Three of the pairs on display are by Dutch painters.
Yesterday we made a roadtrip to the capitol of Connecticut, Hartford. We visited the 
As we 
In the first two weeks of March there will be an art fair with Dutch art galleries and Dutch artists at the 
Southern California is home to the third-largest assemblage of Rembrandt paintings in the United States. "The Golden Age in the Golden State" is the fitting title of one of the current exhibitions that display Rembrandt van Rijn's work in California this month. A number of museums coordinated their shows in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Marino.
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.
An exhibition with biblical engravings and woodcuts by Dutch and Flemish artists opens today in Atlanta, Georgia after a successful display in the Museum of Biblical Art in New York.
Last weekend the exhibit Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914 opened for the public in the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, GA. With over 70 paintings the exhibition examines the work of forty-three American painters drawn to Holland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:
Friday night was a busy night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Many people took the opportunity to see one of the world's most popular paintings, the Milkmaid (De Melkmeid) by Johannes Vermeer. Dutch in America visited the exhibition around of this work that was loaned to the Metropolitan Museum by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in honor of the NY400 celebrations.