Earlier this summer a remarkable exhibit closed at the Dutch National Museum in Amsterdam/It brought more paintings by the artist Vermeer together than had ever been in one place before. It was a smash hit, and it sold out completely months in advance. You may remember we talked about it earlier this year. I wonder if some of you got to see it.
Now, there's a program that brings Vermeer-at least perfect copies of his work-to people in the Netherlands who are confined to rest homes. The program has its roots during the coronavirus pandemic. The isolation of those months hit everyone in assisted living centers extremely hard, whether it was in Eindhoven or Waco. Cathelijne Denekamp, the manager of accessibility at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, knows that great art can be a balm to the loneliness in those places: an enriching distraction, you could say.
So, the museum began a program called "Night Watch on Tour," in which it sent four actual-sized reproductions of Rembrandt's masterpiece familiarly known as "The Night Watch" into Commonly hospitals and nursing homes around the country.
In the run-up to the Vermeer show-and then given the widespread disappointment of the vast number of people even in the Netherlands who were unable to see it-the Museum began expanding its outreach. It's began a program called "Closer to Vermeer. In a collaboration with the Rijksmuseum, the Philips corporation, and the Elisabeth Art Foundation, it's built a big, portable display vitrine that mimics the cabinet galleries where the museum displays its beloved Vermeer's.
In it are four life-size replicas of Vermeer's most famous paintings: The Love Letter; The Milkmaid; (Woman Reading a Letter, and The Little Street. In a thoughtful touch, the paintings are lit in a particular way and hung lower so that people in wheelchairs can have the proper viewing experience. The overall intention is to create for the residents of assisted living facilities the feeling of being at the museum.
To host the program, individual nursing homes can submit a request on the website. For a cost of only 250 Euros, a facility gets the replicas for three weeks. It's already a tremendous success. They've got requests booked for two years and Denekamp hopes the project will keep going way beyond that. "If you are unable to visit the Rijksmuseum, then the Rijksmuseum will come to you," she says. What a wonderful attitude for the caretakers of great art to have.
