Following years of closure, the Iziko Museums of South Africa reopened The Old Town House in Cape Town on 11 October.

Located in Cape Town’s former town hall, the Michaelis Collection is a renowned group of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art. The collection was assembled by the diamond trader Max Michaelis in the early twentieth century. In 1914, he donated the works to the South African government to commemorate the formation of the Union of South Africa. Before opening as a public museum, the building’s interior was remodeled to resemble the galleries of the Mauritshuis. Comprising over 100 paintings, more than 100 prints, and numerous drawings, the collection includes works by masters such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, Sir Anthony van Dyck, and Pieter de Hooch.

According to the museum’s website, the new presentation “not only seeks to emulate the sense of abundance of pictures in Dutch homes of the 1600’s but also poses questions about the art-historical relationships of the “baroque” and the “modern” through the deliberate insertion of twentieth-century hard-edge and painterly abstract paintings among pictorial groupings.”