Vermeer blockbuster formally breaks report at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum

The blockbuster Johannes Vermeer exhibition on the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which closed on 4 June, drew 650,000 guests, making it the museum’s most visited exhibition. The usual admission price for the present, which ran for 16 weeks, was €30.

Greater than half (55%) of holiday makers got here from the Netherlands; guests additionally got here from France (17%), Germany (16%), United Kingdom (16%), and america (14%).

The exhibition featured 28 of the 37 works by the Dutch Previous Grasp together with The Milkmaid and The Woman With the Pearl Earring, which was returned to The Hague’s Mauritshuis museum in March. Crucially, the Rijksmuseum additionally upgraded three work together with Woman with a Flute (1664-67 or later) from the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork in Washington, DC.

Taco Dibbits, the final director Rijksmuseum, says in a press release: “We needed the guests to get pleasure from it to the fullest. This was solely attainable by limiting the variety of guests. The Rijksmuseum is grateful for the beneficiant loans from museums all over the world which have enabled it to convey collectively extra works by Vermeer than ever earlier than.”

“Although it was a logistical miracle to corral three-quarters of Vermeer’s output into one present, 28 continues to be only a few work to hold in a big exhibition area. Fortunately for us, the curators Gregor J.M. Weber and Pieter Roelofs have saved their nerve and trusted in ‘much less is extra’,” wrote the novelist Tracy Chevalier in our Huge Evaluate.

Greater than 100,000 copies of the Vermeer catalogue, priced at €35, have additionally been offered, greater than every other exhibition catalogue within the historical past of the Rijksmuseum. Numerous analysis tasks have been additionally initiated in the course of the exhibition. One such venture concluded of The Milkmaid: “the can and board seen within the underpainting, however not within the ultimate portray, point out that Vermeer continued to hunt tranquility and the proper composition in the course of the portray course of”, says a venture assertion.

Though the present is closed, Vermeer followers can nonetheless get their repair: from 7 June to 10 October, six work by the artist will stay on show within the Gallery of Honour of the Rijksmuseum. The Woman within the Crimson Hat (Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington DC) and Younger Lady on the Virginal (The Leiden Assortment, New York) will go on present alongside works by Vermeer from the Rijksmuseum assortment.