In a refreshing new twist on how to bring new life to long-revered art and objects both the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have invited philosophers to play the role of curator
DRESDEN CONSIDERS THE BOWL
Philosopher Wolfgang Scheppe has collaborated with the staff of the Dresden State Art Collections to present an exhibition in tribute to the American art historian George Kubler and his 1962 treatise The Shape of Time. The show focuses on a single form: the bowl. Ninety-nine examples drawn from many eras and cultures are presented in a long line and juxtaposed against a series of conceptual photographs, also of bowls, by the late Italian photographer Franco Vimercati. The human imagination cannot help but compare and contrast them according to the visual relationships created by their ordering. The bowl itself is revealed to be timeless and as utilitarian now as it was at the dawn of human civilization. Its stylistic variations map the myriad expressions that increasingly diverse societies arrived at even while keeping the bowl’s basic form intact. A German-language catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition.
Gallery view of The Things of Life–The Life of Things at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden. Photograph by Adrian Sauer.
The Things of Life-The Life of Things • Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden • to July 27 • skd.museum
AMSTERDAM PONDERS WHAT ART CAN TEACH US
Holland’s Rijksmuseum invited English philosophers Alain de Botton and John Armstrong to guest curate an exhibition intended to provoke the visitor to consider art and objects not for their historical significance but rather for their power to help us address the everyday problems of contemporary life. To accomplish this, they have scattered a series of giant-sized “Post-it” notes bearing “philosophical graffiti” throughout the museum that contemplate the idea that “Art is Therapy.” They begin in the gloriously restored original entranceway, a nineteenth-century Gothic revival ode to the great cathedrals, to remind us that museums of that era took on the role previously held by the church. They exhort visitors to reconsider this idea, which went out of fashion with the advent of modernism.
Giant “Post-its” have been placed throughout the Rijksmuseum’s galleries as part of the museum’s Art is Therapy project. Photograph by Olivier Middendorp.
The installation continues through the permanent galleries: a handsome Dutch cupboard of about 1607 gives rise to musings on the beauty of orderliness. A rock crystal covered cup inspires thoughts about the beauty of fragile objects, not least along them, human beings. An exquisite still life by Adriaen Coorte of about 1696 depicting a bowl of strawberries serves to remind us not to let familiarity breed contempt, especially with our partners. An intricately carved sixteenth-century prayer nut offers an antidote to our contemporary addiction to smartphones. The installation even extends into the gift shop and onto the rooftop view over Amsterdam. It is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue.
Art is Therapy • Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam • to September 7 • rijksmuseum.nl
REOPENING OF THE MAURITSHUIS
Cross section of the Mauritshuis and the new underground foyer that links the city palace to the Royal Dutch Shell Wing. The project was completed by Amsterdam-based Hans van Heeswijk Architects. Photograph © Hans van Heeswijk Architects.
After a two-year renovation, the Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery has reopened. The original lakeside house built in the center of The Hague for John Maurice, prince of Nassau-Siegen, between1636 and 1644 has now not only been painstakingly restored but also connected, via a light-filled underground foyer, to a new wing that doubles the museum’s former size.
The gallery, which first opened to allow the public to view the Dutch Royal Picture Collection in 1822, now offers modern exhibition rooms, an education center and other modern facilities. Highlights from its remarkable assemblage of Dutch masterpieces include Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring of about 1665 as well as Rembrandt van Rijn’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp of about 1632.
The inaugural exhibition to be held in the new Royal Dutch Shell Wing will explore the old building’s original design by seventeenth-century architects Jacob van Campen and Pieter Post and how the contemporary team Hans van Heeswijk Architects has brought the new facade more closely back to its beginnings than anyone alive has ever before seen it.
Mauritshuis • The Hague • mauritshuis.nl
BIENNALE DES ANTIQUAIRES
Mark your calendars for the twenty-seventh edition of Paris’s famed Biennale des Antiquaires in September, which will unabashedly celebrate the grandest French style. Christian Deydier, president of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires (the French antiques dealers’ association), which organizes the event, has commissioned famed decorator Jacques Grange to “re-create” the gardens of Versailles within the walls of the glass-domed Grand Palais in collaboration with the domaine’s gardeners. In addition to the preview gala dinner that has come to be one of Paris’s most coveted invitations, the Biennale will host a pre-preview banquet at the palace of Versailles that will benefit the palace’s ongoing restoration.
La Marne à Nogent-Le Perreux by Raoul Dufy (1877-1953), 1939. Stoppenbach and Delestre, London.
The fair design signals a confident return to Gallic pride, which is borne out in highlights such as a Raoul Dufy watercolor of the Marne at Nogent that features a boat proudly waving the French flag offered by Stoppenbach and Delestre; a gilded dolphin-footed torchère from the Régence period at the stand of Galerie François Léage; and a bronze partridge by François Pompon at Galerie Xavier Eeckhout. The fair is, nevertheless, international and includes antiquities and objects from around the world, contemporary art, and arguably a few too many large jewels. Galerie G. Sartiwill exhibits an exquisite cassone panel of about 1440 painted by Paolo da Visso with three scenes from Boccaccio. However, a pair of rare Chinese porcelain vases with French ormolu mounts of the Louis XVI period at the stand of Galerie Léage most concisely sums up this show-in which even objects from across the globe are framed in a style that is unapologetically Gallic.
Biennale des Antiquaires • Grand Palais, Paris • September 11-21 • sna-france.com
