CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

The year 2024 marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of Fort Orange, the first permanent Dutch settlement that developed into the present-day city of Albany, the capital of New York State. To commemorate this milestone, the Albany Institute of History & Art and The Leiden Collection have organized the exhibition Delights of the Senses: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life.

Delights of the Senses presents paintings and objects that evoke the senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch in seventeenth-century Dutch culture. On view will be paintings of everyday life by Dutch artists such as Gerrit Dou (1613–1675), Jan Steen (1626–1679), and Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) alongside material culture items similar to those depicted in the paintings. Displayed together, these paintings and objects invite viewers to imagine daily moments in an earlier time—whether it be the sound of lively music, the feel of soft fur, the fragrance of a flower bouquet, or the tang of a hoppy glass of beer—as they were perceived not just through the eyes, but all the senses. In addition to twenty paintings from The Leiden Collection, Delights of the Senses will include several prints from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, along with objects from First Church, Albany, Friends of Historic Kingston, Historic Huguenot Street, Historic Hudson Valley, the New York State Museum, and the rich holdings of the Albany Institute.

This exhibition is accompanied by a 100-page, full-color illustrated exhibition catalogue: Elizabeth Nogrady and Diane Shewchuk, eds. Delights of the Senses: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life. Featuring Paintings from The Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Albany, Albany Institute of History & Art. Albany, 2024. It features essays by Annie Correll, Marieke M. A. Hendriksen, Erin Kramer, Lizzie Marx, Elizabeth Nogrady and Natascha Veldhorst, as well as catalogue entries on Leiden Collection works and an exhibition checklist.

On Saturday 21 September  2024, the exhibition will be featured in the New Netherland Institute’s Joint Conference with the Albany Institute of History & Art.