The Mauritshuis is to loan Johannes Vermeer’s painting Girl with a Pearl Earring to the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan. The painting will be on temporary loan while the Mauritshuis is closed for alterations in August and September 2026.

Osaka Exhibition

The Mauritshuis received a request from Japan – from which many of the museum’s international visitors come – to temporarily exhibit the painting there when the museum is closed. The presentation in Osaka will be organized by the Asahi Shimbun, one of the largest media organizations in Japan, with which the Mauritshuis has collaborated for several years. Additionally, the Asahi Shimbun has decided to support the Mauritshuis as a project partner over the next four years.

Education Center

The Mauritshuis will use the support of the Asahi Shimbun to fund the alterations scheduled for this year and the refurbishment and operation of the building on Korte Vijverberg (in the immediate vicinity of the Mauritshuis) which the museum took over on 1 December 2025. One of the museum’s most important projects there will be the opening of a new Mauritshuis Education Center in 2028.

Previous loans

The painting was last loaned in 2023, for the major Johannes Vermeer survey exhibition at the Rijksmuseum. It also went on a world tour while major building work was being carried out at the Mauritshuis in 2012–2014. The touring exhibition provided important funding for the renovations. In Japan, the painting was shown at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and in the city of Kobe. It then moved on to the United States for the exhibition The Masters of the 17th Century: Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis. A total of 2.2 million people visited the touring exhibition.