“Goddesses of Art Nouveau“ - The Exhibition

As the cinemas opened, so has everything else, including museums. So I have decided to surprise a friend and bring her to The Allard Pierson Museum - which is right in the centre of city but known only to connoisseurs, as majority of visitors focus on handful of the biggest tourist attractions and archaeological museum is apparently not one of them. To be honest, I have also discovered it completely by accident - even though is right in the centre and situated in a very attractive old bank building, it is constantly overlooked because there is just so much going on in the centre.

Right now there is an exhibition called “Goddesses of Art Nouveau“ and this has been something I was really waiting for, as the exhibition was long planned and constantly postponed because of the lockdown. It was really very, very beautiful and all about famous artists from the beginning of 20th century who worked in the Art Deco style, like Alphonse Mucha, Jules Chéret (the father of the modern poster), Henri Privat-Livemont, Hans Drinnerberg, Jan Toorop and their many contemporaries - I had instantly recognised famous Sarah Bernhardt as a subject of some spectacular art and there was a lot of hair blowing in the wind and very artsy half- naked women in the supposedly ancient clothing, but everything was done in such manner that nobody could accuse it of bad taste. It was very, very beautiful collection though after a while it all becomes a blur because it was quite samey. And interestingly enough, we see it as art now but it was more or less created completely in function of advertising, back in the day. You would get a beautiful fairies advertising something mundane as a washing soap or a tobacco. 

There were also several other exhibitions around the building and I particularly loved one in the basement, where there were exhibited some sensational maps of the world, early books, printing machines, etc (I guess that would be about early print?) - there was even a poster advertising a tour of famous  "The Black Patti" (black version of opera singer Adelina Patti) who was actually Sissieretta Jones and one of the earliest black classical singers ever - she worked around the start of 20th century and was touring Europe, where this poster came from. Not surprisingly, she found that Europeans were less concerned about her skin colour and they celebrated her as an artist instead.