July 15, 2015

Artists funded to sow pot seeds in Amsterdam

Filed under: Nature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:28 pm

The Amsterdam chapter of the Awesome Foundation that awards people money every month to realize ‘awesome initiatives that solve problems or bring joy to the world’ has given art collective Indebt Studios 1000 euro to plant marijuana seeds around town.

The group bought some 40 kilos of cannabis seeds and planted them in all kinds of green spaces in Amsterdam, from flower pots to community gardens, including the ones at the Rijksmuseum.

Why plant 40 kilos of weed? It’s an artistic statement against the increased stamping up of Amsterdam’s wild side, like trying to shut down prostitutes, coffee shops and all the things that make Amsterdam what it is in the first place. “Yoghurt bars are not going to make up for the loss, and that’s sad,” one of the guys said. Big cities like New York and London are losing or have lost their edge, and yes it would be sad if Amsterdam lost its grit, too.

(Link: nieuws.nl)

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October 9, 2014

Rembrandt now has 70 more paintings to his name

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 9:10 am

Yesterday at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam Ernst van de Wetering, head of the Rembrandt Research Group, gave a sixth and final presentation of a sizable catalogue of Rembrandt’s works in which 70 ‘new’ paintings have been added.

Determining whether or not an artwork is the real deal is a science that either devalues or upgrades paintings, changing history in the process. Before saying it’s a Rembrandt or an artwork of one of his pupils or contemporaries, the paintings had to undergo the scrutiny of X-rays, infrared, checking the layers of paint, varnish, canvas, and anything else that would prove that it was authentic.

Rembrandt’s oeuvre now consists of 340 paintings, much to the delight of museums such as the Louvre in Paris and even the Rijksmuseum that now has more real Rembrandts on display. The painting in this posting, ‘Old Man with Beard’, was added to Rembrandt van Rijn’s portfolio in 2011.

Ernst van de Wetering’s catalogue is entitled ‘A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings’, the definite guide for now until technology might make restorers and others reopen the case.

(Link: www.telegraaf.nl, Image: Old Man with Beard, from 1630)

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October 29, 2013

Dutch museums own some 139 contentious artworks

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 1:57 pm

According to years of research carried out by the Netherlands Museums Association on the origins of artworks, some 139 pieces of art acquired by Dutch museums between 1933 and 1945 (during the Nazi regime) are suspected of being stolen, confiscated or were sold to them by force. Some 41 museums have such artworks in their collections, many of which were owned by Jews.

The research, started in 2009, had as a goal of establishing what the extent was of the possession of contentious paintings after the end of WWII. Some 162 Dutch museums collaborated with researchers in order to help return artworks to their rightful owners and/or their heirs. A special website will go live at 4 pm has now gone live on Tuesday, 29 October (CET) for everyone to peruse and maybe even help.

The museum with the most ‘stolen’ artworks is the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (The Hague Municipal Museum), followed by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Museum and Stedelijk Museum.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl, www.museumvereniging.nl, (Illustration: Charing Cross Bridge by Claude Monet. Source: politie.nl)

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May 13, 2013

Bike path under Rijksmuseum Amsterdam to open tomorrow

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 9:33 am

On a dreary Saturday I snapped this picture of the entrance to the recently opened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

This is also a photo of the only bike path in the world that bicycles are not (yet) allowed on, which is why there are barriers and security guards.

When in 2003 renovations started the architects came up with a plan to move the museum entrance from the side to the tunnel underneath the museum. This would bring museum visitors in closer proximity to the cyclists who fully expected to still be able to use their age old bike path. The footpath (not shown here) is several meters wide, but as anybody who lives in Amsterdam knows, tourists will not look where they walk.

Museum director Wim Pijbes has traditionally been against the bike path, Eindhovens Dagblad reports, and probably would shed no tears if people stopped noticing that there was one.

Although the Netherlands does have a concept of right of way (recht van overpad), people here make much less of deal about it than in, say, the United Kingdom where the Rambler’s Association actively works to keep public paths over private property open. The Rijksmuseum is, as the name implies, publicly owned.

The new Rijksmuseum opened on 13 April of this year. The bike path will be opened tomorrow evening, although the city reserves the right to close it ‘at busy times’ until it has had the time to put in extra security measures.

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April 13, 2013

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam is back in business

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 4:04 pm

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands opened the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam today.

The museum had been closed for a decade for renovations by Spanish architectural firm Cruz y Ortiz, Miami Herald writes. The Queen was wearing a simple brown outfit and one of her trademark hats in what must have been one of her last public performances. I thought she looked lively yet old.

The Queen symbolically opened the museum by twisting a giant key in a giant lock, after which fireworks were lit.

A lot more people than I had expected had shown up, thousands drawn perhaps by the promise of a free visit to the museum, which will be open to anyone until midnight, France 24 reports. It was so busy it almost seemed like young Canadian pop star Justin Bieber had arrived in the city… oh wait.

The opening was accompanied by the musical performances of 13 marching bands from all over the kingdom. The bands marched up and down a wide orange ramp that would later be used to let the general public enter the museum. After the opening, the bands spread out over Museum Plein. The Caribbean band was especially very popular and completely locked in by onlookers.

As The Independent writes, the Rijksmuseum was originally intended as the home of classic Dutch masters. “But what were they smoking when the management of the foremost Dutch museum and the Government Building Agency predicted the task would take just three years?” Part of the problem, the paper writes, was the way the government looked at requests for tenders, which was that everything should be done on the cheap. The underlying idea, not to be frivolous with public money, was good, but the result was decades of cost overruns and sometimes plain shoddy work. (The Rijksmuseum does look good though.)

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April 3, 2013

Promo video for Rijksmuseum shows 17th century chase

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 2:57 pm

The Rijksmuseum (or Rijks Museum) in Amsterdam, home to many a Dutch master, has been partially closed to the public for renovations ever since 2003 and will be reopened on 13 April by Queen Beatrix in the last month of her reign.

Sponsor ING made this video in a shopping centre in Breda of a 17th century shop lifter being chased by the city watch. The tableau vivant at the end depicts Rembrandt van Rijn’s ‘Night Watch’, the most prominent work in the Rijksmuseum’s collection. (Rijksmusem means ‘state museum’—there are several Rijksmuseums in the Netherlands, but if there is no city name attached people assume it is the one in Amsterdam).

Yes, it’s that same ING, the Dutch bank too big to fail. Its managers are now complaining that their salaries are too low. But at least they get to play patron of the arts with my tax money. These are the same arts the government no longer had money for after they loaned 10 billion euro to ING. Welcome to neo-liberal Upsidedownia.

(Video: ING/YouTube. Image: crop from the video)

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December 19, 2012

Many Amsterdam museums open on 1 January 2013

Filed under: Art,Film,Photography by Orangemaster @ 11:32 am

Everybody has some sort of party on New Year’s Eve, but what to do on New Year’s Day when you live in the capital and the town gets too quiet? Make going to a museum with friends and family a New Year’s resolution. Or there’s also the zoo, catching a film and some other tourist attractions.

The year 2013 will be a special year for Amsterdam as the city celebrates several milestones. The refurbished Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum will reopen, the Artis Royal Zoo will celebrate its 175th anniversary and the Amsterdam Canal Ring will celebrate its 400th jubilee.

Rijksmuseum (11 am – 5 pm)
Hermitage Amsterdam (including Van Gogh Museum exhibition) (11 am – 5 pm)
Foam (noon – 6 pm)
Stedelijk Museum (11 am – 5 pm)
Museum of the Canals (10 am – 5 pm)
Anne Frank House (noon – 7 pm)
Jewish Historical Museum (opens at noon)
EYE Film Institute Netherlands (opens at 1 pm)
Artis Royal Zoo (10 am – 8 pm)
Madame Tussauds (opens at noon)

(Link: www.dutchdailynews.com, Illustration: the Van Gogh that was ‘discovered’ last year)

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November 1, 2012

Rijksmuseum offers copyright-free masterpieces online

Filed under: Art,Online by Orangemaster @ 2:17 pm

This week Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum launched an online database of 125,000 high resolution masterpieces called ‘Rijksstudio’ that can be downloaded and used for free. The images are copyright-free, and the idea is that you can make your own collection of images, post them to social media, caption them, make mouse pads out of them and all kinds of other creative stuff.

Rijksstudio was royally opened by Prince Constantijn and has a localized Pinterest feel to it.

(Link: www.limburger.nl)

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August 27, 2012

Rijksmuseum purposely misspells name in new logo

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 11:32 am

The new logo and the old logo.

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the home of many a Dutch master, has presented its new logo.

Oddly enough, the name is spelled “Rijks museum”, which is not correct according to the official Dutch spelling. As one commenter at Bright asked, who is Rijk and why does he have his own museum?

The designer, Irma Boom, explains that the space is on purpose: “Everybody is already using Rijks as a pet name for the museum”—her spelling merely codifies and pays homage to that practice.

Bright also links to a profile about Boom which is a must-watch for its opening sentence alone, “I hate hand-made books”, which runs completely counter to today’s idolization of all things artisanal.

Meldpunt Spatiegebruik, which collects examples of the misuse of spaces in compound words, writes: “Never have I received so many reports about a single space within half a day. But the Rijksmuseum belongs to all of us, so you can’t touch it.”

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August 4, 2012

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam buys rare drawing by teacher Rembrandt

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 1:37 pm

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has bought this drawing of the Nerva Forum in Rome by Pieter Lastman for GBP 145,000 at an auction at Christie’s in London.

Historiek.net reports that Lastman made this drawing in 1602, Rembrandt’s birth year. It is one of his only two known Italian drawings in the world.

Lastman was a teacher of Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Lievens. The former only studied for half a year with the master, but it is believed that Rembrandt’s use of light was influenced by what he knew about Caravaggio through Lastman.

Another important Rijksmuseum acquisition is a wooden sculpture by Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621), the Screaming Child from 1615, which disappeared in 1897 and hasn’t been seen since. An anonymous donor gave it to the museum, which will display it in 2013 after the reopening of its main building.

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