Exhibitions

I have neglected my blog but in fact I was very busy with a lot of exhibitions. 

First, I went again again to Hermitage, this time because I wanted to share the exhibition with my friend Ruth who used to be my work colleague and we are constantly visiting cinema & museums together - I have enjoyed that exhibition very much and wanted to show it to her. To my biggest surprise she knew and recognised many of the people on the portraits, which completely blew me away and I was delighted that she knows about Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, etc. It was our first time together in Hermitage so we roamed around the whole building and later I even showed her a Holocaust monument nearby. 

Than I went to Van Gogh Museum - its one of the most totemic places in Amsterdam and I usually avoid it as a plague, because its focus of tourist attention, which means crowded and busy - but now I just had to see a new exhibition tribute to Austrian artist Gustav Klimt whom I knew and loved for a long time. So off I went, booked a ticket online, reserved a time slot and used my museumkaart membership - it was excellent! I have already seen Klimt's painting in Vienna but this exhibition presented several different faces of his talent, first as a classically trained painter, than in a full bloom of his fantasy work (inspired by no less interesting Dutch artist Jan Toorop) and later some quite amazing big paintings of nature. Sadly, Klimt was only 55 when he died (from combination of stroke and Spanish flu) but his work is immortal and timeless. 

We have visited only Gustav Klimt part of museum, the rest deserves another visit - the main building is large enough to spend the whole afternoon there.

The most recent exhibition I visited was in famous Nieuwe Kerk - 15th century church standing next to the Royal Palace and now serves as museum - I just love how this fantastic, historical place can always be completely transformed depending to occasion. At the moment they have exhibition about late Queen Juliana and her life - it was very well visited and quite crowded with locals, but also very interesting for me as I love history and don't know much about local royal family. Apparently its a family where first child inherits the throne and it just happened that three generations of women served as queens (husbands providing the children and living in the shadow) - the genetics are incredibly strong in the family and all these ladies resemble each other a lot - each of these ladies eventually abdicated in favour of their child who than took over the duties. It was very interesting exhibition and I was very pleased to be there, will probably go again because I need to show it to friends.