Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum Reopens, Adding To City’s Reputation As A Major Art Destination

by Sean McLachlan on

Amsterdam is famous, and infamous, for its many attractions appealing to all types of traveler. One of the best reasons to visit is for the world-class art museums such as the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Hermitage.

Now another can be added to the list. The Stedelijk Museum reopens to the public this Sunday after a long remodel that has created more gallery space, allowing the first comprehensive display of the museum’s world-renowned collection of modern and contemporary art. Queen Beatrix presided over the opening ceremony on Saturday.

The museum is especially strong with works from the many art movements of the early 20th century like Expressionism, Bauhaus and Suprematism. One important work is “Woodcutter,” painted in 1912 or 1913 by Kazimir Malevich, shown here courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The museum also has a major collection dedicated to 20th century industrial and graphic design.

To mark the reopening, a temporary exhibition, “Beyond Imagination,” is on display until November 11. This exhibition brings together 20 international artists, active in the Netherlands, to give their views on the boundaries between reality and imagination.

The new design reorients the entire museum to face onto Amsterdam’s Museumplein (Museum Plaza), which it shares with the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw.

Giant Roman Mosaic Discovered In Turkey

by Sean McLachlan on


A team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has discovered an impressive Roman mosaic at a little-known site in Turkey.

The 1,600-square-foot work is part of the forecourt of a Roman bath at the ancient city of Antiochia ad Cragum on the southern Turkish coast. The mosaic dates to the third or fourth centuries A.D. and archaeologists think they’ve uncovered less than half of it.

“Its large size signals, in no small part, that the outward signs of the empire were very strong in this far-flung area,” said excavation director and UNL professor Michael Hoff in a press release. “We were surprised to have found a mosaic of such size and of such caliber in this region – it’s an area that had usually been off the radar screens of most ancient historians and archeologists, and suddenly this mosaic comes into view and causes us to change our focus about what we think (the region) was like in antiquity.”

The team has been excavating the city since 2005 and has worked on a third-century imperial temple and a street lined with shops. They hope to uncover the rest of the mosiac next summer.

“This region is not well understood in terms of history and archaeology … so everything we find adds more evidence to our understanding of this area of the Roman Empire,” Hoff said.

Hopefully the mosaic will be left in situ so visitors can see it in its original setting, like the mosaics in Ephesus and Pergamon, Turkey’s most famous Classical cities.

The best collection of Roman mosaics I’ve seen is at the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano in Mérida, Spain. The Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid also has a grand collection, but the museum is currently closed for renovation. The British Museum in London also has a good collection. I’m sure Rome has some great collections too, but when I visited I was so entranced with the churches, catacombs and monuments that I never made it into any of the archaeological museums!

[Photo courtesy University of Nebraska-Lincoln]

Louvre Opens New Department Of Islamic Art

by Sean McLachlan on


The Louvre in Paris is opening a new Department of Islamic Art that will have one of the best such collections in the world.

One treasure is this ivory pyxis of Prince Al-Mugẖīra, shown here in a photograph courtesy Wikimedia Commons. It was made in 968 at Medina Azahara near Cordoba, Spain. Note that there are human figures on it. While many Islamic traditions forbid the depiction of people and animals, others such as the Moors of Spain, the Moghuls of India, the Persians of Iran, and the Ottomans of Turkey all had a long tradition of human portraiture.

This is just one of the many insights visitors will gain now that a refurbished and expanded wing of the museum has opened its doors with more than 30,000 square feet of exhibition space. The Department of Islamic Art will exhibit nearly 3,000 works, whose origins range from Spain to India and date from the 8th to the 19th century. The total collection numbers some 18,000 works from the Louvre’s collections and some on long-term loan from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

The recent furor over the depiction of the Prophet Mohammed in an anti-Islamic movie has overlooked the fact that some Islamic traditions do create portraits of Mohammed, as this page from the University of Bergen makes clear. Of course these are positive portrayals, but they show that the Islamic world is not monolithic in its ideas of what can and cannot be shown. The Louvre did not state whether they have any such images on display.

Van Gogh Painting Losing Its Luster

by Sean McLachlan on

Vincent Van Gogh is famous for the brilliant colors he used in his paintings, but one of them is beginning to fade.

“Flowers in a Blue Vase,” owned by the Kröller-Müller Museum in The Netherlands, is showing signs of deterioration. Specifically, the brilliant yellows are beginning to crack and turn gray.

The museum stated in a press release that it decided to take two tiny samples from the painting and have them analyzed. Imagine being charged with the task of popping off pieces of a Van Gogh painting! Anyway, the samples were sent off to a laboratory that found that a varnish added to protect the painting after the artist’s death included lead that reacted to cadmium in the yellow paint to gradually turn the paint gray.

Even more worrying, the varnish seems to have absorbed some of the underlying paint, thus making it hard to remove without causing damage to the picture. Now other museums owning Van Goghs will need to check to see if this type of varnish was used on their art treasures.

Koen Janssens, who led the research team, stated that, “paintings by Vincent Van Gogh are not static entities for decades and centuries to come. Over a period of 100 years, they can actually be considered a fairly reactive cocktail of chemicals that behaves in unexpected manners.”

[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Remodeled Hunterian Art Gallery In Glasgow Reopens With Rembrandt Exhibition

by Sean McLachlan on


The Hunterian Art Gallery, part of the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, has just reopened after a nine-month remodel that expanded its exhibition space.

Its opening show is “Rembrandt and the Passion,” which showcases one of the Hunterian’s most famous works of art, Rembrandt’s “Entombment Sketch,” alongside the final painting of the “Entombment” (shown here courtesy the University of Leipzig) and about 40 other masterpieces.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was one of Europe’s greatest painters and printmakers. This exhibition explains how the “Entombment Sketch” served as the model for the later painting. Rembrandt had been commissioned to create a series of paintings on the Passion of Christ for the Prince of Orange. It was one of the most important commissions of his career and helped give him a permanent standing among Europe’s major artists.

Since the sketch is in Glasgow and the final painting is usually in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, this is a rare opportunity to see them side by side. The exhibition also examines Rembrandt’s studio, his painting process, inspiration and the techniques he used.

Besides its art gallery, the Hunterian Museum has a large collection of art and artifacts from all periods – everything from dinosaur bones to 19th century medical equipment – and a new permanent exhibition on the Antonine Wall, which was briefly the northernmost border of the Roman Empire in Scotland.

“Rembrandt and the Passion” runs from September 15 to December 2.