Ongoing & Upcoming International Vermeer Events

Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring & the Diana and her Companions go to Japan in 2012

Masterpieces from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
June 30-Sept. 17, 2012
http://www.asahi.com/mauritshuis2012/

This exhibition will mark the reopening of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, which has been closed for renovations for two years.

This show will feature Vermeer's masterpiece Girl with a Pearl Earring and the early Diana and her Companions while many other masterpieces are already on display at a separate Vermeer show (continuing through March 14) at Tokyo's Bunkamura.

video presentation :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZalFLhX0_o0

Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in the United States in 2013

Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis (35 works)
de Young - San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts
San Francisco
Jan 26 - June 2, 2013

Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis (35 works)
High Museum of Art
Atlanta
June 22 - Sept. 29, 2013

Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis
(10 works)
Frick Collection
New York
Oct. 22, 2013 - Jan 12, 2014

press release:
Masterpieces from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis will be exhibited at three museums in the United States from January 2013 to January 2014. The Mauritshuis has agreed to send more than thirty works to the de Young/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; the tour will finish with a smaller selection at The Frick Collection in New York. Among the paintings going on tour are the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer and The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, neither of which will have been seen by American audiences in ten years. Furthermore, this is the first occasion since the mid-1980s that a substantial group of works from the Mauritshuis has come to the United States. The decision to organize a major international travelling exhibition of a select group of paintings from the museum’s rich collection was prompted by the large-scale renovations to its premises, which will be finished in 2014.

Vermeer’s Late Young Woman Seated at a Virginal exhibited in Oxford

Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford
Jan. 23 - Sept., 2012

http://www.ashmolean.org/news/?id=171

Vermeer’s Early Christ in the House of Martha and Mary to be exhibited in Italy

Da Vermeer a Kandinsky. Capolavori dai musei del mondo a Rimini
Jan. 21 - June 3, 2012

Castel Sismondo
Piazza Malatesta
47900 Rimini, Italy

http://www.lineadombra.it/da-vermeer-a-kandinsky/la-mostra

Vermeer’s Guitar Player to be exhibited at the London National Gallery in 2012.

With the closure of the Kenwood House for urgent restoration in 2012, the museum was posed with the dilemma of what to do with their masterpieces. The Kenwood has just announced that Vermeer’s Guitar Player will be displayed at the National Gallery in London. The exquisite work, never before relined, will also be examined by the National Gallery's conservation department. Keeping it in storage was ruled out because it was the most costly alternative. Dates to be announced.

Vermeer's Girl with a Glass of Wine on exhibition in Kassel

Light Structure - The Light in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer
18 November 2011 - 26 February 2012
Museum Hessen Kassel, Kassel, Germany

Seventy superb works from the Baroque age of painting will be displayed in the upcoming exhibition Light structure: The light in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, in William Castle Museum in Kassel. The exhibition will address one of the most notable aspects of European painting: the translation of light in painting. Attempts on the part of painters to render the myriad effects of light with paint were paralleled by intense scientific research on light.

In cooperation with the Berlin research group  Historical light structure   the exhibition examines the different aspects of light painting in the 17th century on the basis of paintings, graphics and optical devices, also in view of the contemporary scientific treatises. The starting point is the art of the 15th and 16 Century and the fundamental innovations of Caravaggio. North of the Alps have been taken including those of Utrecht artists like Gerard van Honthorst and developed.

Different areas of the exhibition are dedicated to the particular diversity and range of Dutch paintings of light, including day light, nocturnal landscapes, interior and portrait paintings. Vermeer’s Girl with a Glass of Wine will be one of the principal works of the exhibition.

museum website (German only): http://www.museum-kassel.de/index_navi.php?parent=5367

opening times: Tues - Sun and holidays 10-17 clock, Thu 10-20 clock, closed Mondays

Vermeer exhbition catalogue

Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence
by Marjorie E. Wieseman, Mr. Wayne Franits & H. Perry Chapman
2011
224 pages, Yale University Press

purchase exhibition catalogue from Fitzwilliam Museum online shop

product description:

Focusing on the extraordinary Lacemaker from the Musée du Louvre, this beautiful book investigates the subtle and enigmatic paintings by Johannes Vermeer that celebrate the intimacy of the Dutch household. Moments frozen in paint that reveal young women sewing, reading or playing musical instruments, captured in Vermeer’s uniquely luminous style, recreate a silent and often mysterious domestic realm, closed to the outside world, and inhabited almost exclusively by women and children.

Three internationally recognized experts in the field explain why women engaged in mundane domestic tasks, or in pleasurable pastimes such as music making, writing letters, or adjusting their toilette, comprise some of the most popular Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century. Among the most intriguing of these compositions are those that consciously avoid any engagement with the viewer. Rather than acknowledging our presence, figures avert their gazes or turn their backs upon us; they stare moodily into space or focus intently on the activities at hand. In viewing these paintings, we have the impression that we have stumbled upon a private world kept hidden from casual regard.

Vermeer exhibition catalogue

Human Connections in the Age of Vermeer
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Danielle H.A.C. Lokin
Scala Publishers Ltd
2011

This book focuses on the many forms of communication that existed in seventeenth-century Dutch society between family members, lovers, and professional acquaintances, both present and absent. The forty-four carefully selected Dutch genre paintings include major works by many of the finest masters of the period, including Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu. Vermeer's three masterpieces about love letters form the core of the exhibition as they are profound examples of the power of communication. Dutch artists of the seventeenth century portrayed the wide range of emotions elicited by the various forms of communication, not only in the manner in which they render gestures and facial expressions of personal interactions, but also in the ways in which they show men and women responding to the written word. The painters often introduced objects from daily life that had symbolic implications, among them musical instruments, to enrich the pictorial narratives of their scenes. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Communication: Visualizing the Human Connection in the Age of Vermeer (2011-2012), which celebrates the 400th anniversary of the diplomatic exchanges between Japan and the Netherlands, this book connects the pictorial and the literary aspects of Dutch cultural traditions during the Golden Age.

New image of Vermeer's recently restored Woman in Blue Reading a Letter

click here to access high resolution image

The Rijksmuseum has updated their hi-res image of the Woman in Blue Reading a Letter after its recent restoration. At first sight it looks a bit disjointed as pictures always do after restoration. The whole much cooler in hue now the long winding scarf-like piece of cloth on the table, once fairly muddled, can be made out a bit better recalling a similar scarf-like object that drapes down in the Art of Painting. The figure has gained much force and now stands out of the picture more than it did before the dark, yellow varnish was removed. The painting now appears to have greater spatial resonance and sense of volume.

Some color can be made out in the map as well as a few topographical features which had been overpainted. A row of discreet brass buttons with tiny highlights now run along the side of the foreground chair which had been completely obscured by retouches.

Gangsters and Vermeer: Will we ever see Vermeer's stolen Concert again? Perhaps yes.

drawn from the THE SACRAMENTO BEE.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/24/3725190/can-whitey-bulger-help-solve-biggest.html

With the arrest Wednesday of notorious Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger, many in the art world are now asking: Could it provide a break in the greatest art heist in American history which included Vermeer's Concert ? Rumors have long swirled that Bulger, the head of the city's powerful Irish-American mob at the time, may have played a role - or must have known who did. Some have speculated that he stashed the stolen masterpieces away to use as a "get-out-of-jail-free card" if he was ever caught. Others think he sent the paintings to allies in the Irish Republican Army to use as a bargaining chip. The Gardner Museum had no comment Thursday on the arrest other than a Tweet saying, "Until a recovery is made, our work continues." Many who have studied the case are similarly skeptical about Bulger's direct involvement. Last year, investigators in the Gardner case said there was no evidence in the mountains of wiretaps and other records to link Bulger to the crime.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/06/what-does-whitey-bulger-know-about-the-1990-gardner-museum-art-heist.html

Update

Communication: Visualizing Human Connection in the Age of Vermeer

Other than the previously announced (see entry below for details) world premiere of Vermeer's Woman in Blue Reading a Letter after its restoration, Lady Writing and the Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid will be a part of the exhibition Communication: Visualizing Human Connection in the Age of Vermeer in Japan.

World premiere of Vermeer's Woman in Blue Reading a Letter after its restoration.

exhibition website: http://vermeer-message.com/

Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto:   25 June – 16 Oct 2011
Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai:     27 Oct-2011 – 12 Dec 2011
The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo:    23 Dec – 14 March 2012

curator:
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

Essential Vermeer Attempts Facebook

Essential Vermer: Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Essential-Vermeer/133691276693957

What does the global social network Facebook have to do with Vermeer? At first glance very little. Take a look at many of the art institutions’ Facebook pages that tend to be one-way monologues with insignificant interaction. People's comments really don't seem to matter.

And yet the chance to bring the Vermeer community a bit closer might be worth a try. I have found Facebook surprisingly efficient for diffusing news rapidly and opening  lines of quick, two-way communication.

So what can you do? Have a look, leave a comment and keep on coming I'll keep on plugging away for a year or so - the time necessary to evaluate any web initiative - and see if a marriage between social networking and art history makes any sense.