Amsterdam
2022-10-15Amsterdam
Stedelijk
The Stedelijk focuses on modern and contemporary art. Not shown here: a platform that was showing the Eames’ “Powers of Ten” (one of my favorite videos) on a loop, and the entirety of the basement exhibition, Anne Imhof’s “Youth”, which felt like a parody of bad contemporary art installations, but was an actual contemporary art installation. Oops.
The Rijksmuseum
Clara
The special exhibition at the Rijks (through January) is a combo of some crawly creatures (largely bugs that have shown up in marginalia of various codecii, but some other fun stuff), and Clara the Rhinoceros.
Fun fact: no one in Europe had seen a rhino before (except for Albrecht Dürer). All of the artists up through the 18th century just copied Dürer’s etching when they wanted to include one in their work. Then Clara was captured in India, toured around the continent, and Europe lost. their. dang. minds.
There’s a ton of works advertising Clara coming to town, portraits painted, decorative arts, etc. There was also a modern portrait of Clara based on the descriptions of her focusing on her weight in bricks and the diet she ate (tobacco leaves) while carted from town to town.
The Rest of the Rijks
LOVED seeing them work on restoring The Night Watch directly in front of us, the very angry swan painting, and the part of the special collections that was like A Fancy Version of The House On The Rock
