In 2023, from February 10 – June 4, you may witness a Once in a Lifetime gathering of Vermeer Paintings in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum.
An At Home lecture presentation by Drs Kees Kaldenbach, art historian, will give you an in-depth perspective. And great layers of visual enjoyment.
Entrance tickets are sold out. Friends tickets are also sold out.
Not included: The Art of Painting, Vienna. I will show a life-size reproduction and explain its key role.
The Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) is staging the largest Vermeer exhibition ever in collaboration with the Mauritshuis (The Hague).
Until now, the most ambitious Vermeer exhibition was the 1995/1996 exhibit with 23 paintings exhibited in The Hague (21 in Washington, when the government institutions lockdown made viewing hard to impossible).
Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum’s general director, amassed 28 pictures by Vermeer. Twenty-eight paintings would already account for more than 2/3 of the artist’s surviving output.
Vermeer, one of his late paintings, from Dublin.
Due to the fragility of Vermeer’s canvases coupled with the growing competition among museums for loans, Dibbits believes that a show, which on this scale is likely not to happen again, will provide a new generation of researchers and public a unique chance to study many of Vermeer’s major works side by side. For this exhibition, the Rijksmuseum is working closely with the Mauritshuis with a team of curators, restorers and natural scientists to examine in depth the seven paintings by Vermeer in Dutch possession. Works by Vermeer from other collections are also involved in this project.
At Home lecture with art historian Drs Kaldenbach
In addition to the works owned by the two museums, which include The Milkmaid and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, other confirmed major loans to the show include The Girl with a Pearl Earring (from Mauritshuis), The Geographer (Staedel Museum, Frankfurt), Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid (National Gallery of Ireland), Woman Holding a Balance (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.), and Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (heavily restored…Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden).
The dedicated exhibition hall for February to the beginning of June 2023 will be VERY crowded and generally Vermeer paintings are rather small. Guiding there and then will be restricted so lecturing AtHome will be optimal. I can offer you a great university level programme :
In my lifetime, I have seen and studied ALL Vermeer paintings in the world. Furthermore am a Vermeer professional, having built one of the largest and best Vermeer web sites in the world, and during those months I offer you my unique At Home class either before or after your Rijksmuseum visit. Click on this link to this dedicated page.
About the teacher: Drs Kees Kaldenbach is an art historian having dedicated his professional life to Vermeer. He appeared in countless TV documentaries including BBC and Japanese TV and he is member of the Amsterdam Early Modernity / Golden Age circle of professionals. He is the author of a yet unpublished book on Vermeer. He has been lecturing and guiding in museums both in Holland and International since 22 years.
Review / Testimonial by Kierstin, March 2023: “Thank you again for such an insightful two hours discussing Vermeer and his mysterious paintings. I felt especially lucky to have a one on one session so I could ask my many questions, to which you always had an answer! Visiting the extraordinary exhibition after our discussion truly enlightened my experience and I would not have looked at the artworks the same way, or looked for specific details had we not met. I am incredibly grateful for your time, knowledge, professionalism, storytelling, etc. What a treat! I would highly recommend others to take the time meet with Kees. 😊
Lecture, March 6, in the Hilton hotel Amsterdam for about 250 members of the American Women’s Club: “Thank you so much for your presentation yesterday. Sorry you didn’t know the group was going to be as large as it was. Everyone really enjoyed it, so we are really grateful that you were able to talk to our group.”
“Thank you for your time today and sharing your knowledge with us. It was very inspirational and I look forward to seeing the exhibit in May.”
Interesting fact:
For painting lighting in museums the standard brightness amount needed is 200 lux. Vermeer paintings do well with just 90 lux. Told personally to me by the director of the Rijksmuseum, Taco Dibbets, February 11, 2023. A measurement of 1 lux is equal to the illumination of a one metre square surface that is one metre away from a single candle.
The Little Street in the Rijksmuseum. Photo shows me teaching there.
Business card. The logo has been crafted by Vermeer.