Since the beginning of war in Ukraine, our local Hermitage in Amsterdam has had cut all the connections with the state of Russia, therefore we also stopped with exhibitions with art from St. Petersburg. The building has two beautiful large wings and for a while it all seemed a bit underused - one wing had selected pieces from Amsterdam History Museum while the other would display one important painting and than milk it for all its worth, the rest of the rooms covered in a story about it - while I understand the principle behind cutting the ties with Russia, still it left the beautiful palatial building depressingly empty. And since Amsterdam History Museum is closed for renovation anyway, I complained why they just didn't move the whole darn thing here.
Well, here comes a new exhibition called "Love Stories - Art, Passion and Tragedy" and would you know its actually genuinely best exhibition here since a long time - finally the large space actually makes sense and its perfectly used. The exhibition is about love between couples, but also love as inspiration for art and sometimes even between two artists. It follows love & desire from sixteenth century portraits to contemporary photography. It was great fun to recognise some of these portraits from London's National Portrait Gallery and I must say this was excellent - also very visited and crowded so it was good to see the museum finally enjoying the attention as it should have.
Amongst other things I was curious about part about the muses & inspiration: muses are inspiration but they are not necessary part of love couple, as in photographs by Welsh photographer Angus McBean who has taken some excellent pictures by black dancer Berto Pasuka. I was very much intrigued with pictures of both the dancer and the photographer, curiously they spoke to me and I very much loved their faces - I even went online to find more about the photographer who apparently was arrested for homosexuality and sentenced to four yours in prison (he served two).
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