Category: Museums

FRANS HALS’ CHILDREN COME HOME at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem

After a decades-long sojourn in America, two of Frans Hals‘ children recently permanently returned to their home-country. Or rather: two small paintings were acquired jointly by the Frans Hals Museum and Maurtshuis at a New York auction, earlier this year. These two paintings are now on display at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, which…

Tabakshistorisch Museum Van Bossestraat 4 2613 CR DELFT Tel. +31 (0) 152122411 Hidden away in a small back street away from the city centre is one of Delft’s hidden gems. To glorify the use and promotion of tobacco in this day and age may seem very unPC but tobacco is like beer – there…

The Tropenmuseum (Museum of the Tropics) is an ethnographic museum located in Amsterdam, whose collection includes objects from Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

There are lots of paintings and books, including an extensive display on the work of Maria Sibylla Merian, the eighteenth century naturalist, entomologist and botanical illustrator, as well as charts and interactive learning opportunities for the young.

Paper is and always has been at the centre of our lives, now and in the past. Its fragility belies its capacity for survival of wars and flames when stone and metal have long been destroyed. It has outlasted papyrus and vellum. Fold it and it produces light and shade, coat it and it becomes hard . . .

The main source of Thiebaud’s inspiration, one might even say, salivating obsession, is food. Not good, healthy wholesome food but cakes, ice-cream and pre-MacDonalds American fast-food – the ubiquitous hot-dog. His breakthrough picture was the 1961 boldly painted still-life of triangular slices of pies

Personally, I quite enjoyed this exhibition but I can understand if some people turned their noses up at it. There is something about monumental size turds that does make you think – and probably your eyes water.

ART NOUVEAU/NIEUWE ZAKELIKKHEID.This exhibition is not only fascinating in its subject matter, it is beautifully mounted to world class standard. It is of such a richness that it is impossible to name all those who created the explosion of enterprise, coupled with art and exquisite applied crafts.