Thursday, 23 March 2006: de Volkskrant, a leading Dutch daily, published a two-page article on the CODART NEGEN study trip to the eastern and northern provinces of the Netherlands.

Wieteke van Zeil, on the arts staff of de Volkskrant, traveled with the group. She reported on the personal contacts and experiences of the participants. The seriousness with which they look at the objects on display was stressed, along with the importance of CODART as a platform for sharing information and future plans. Discoveries made during the trip are highlighted. For example, Eliška Fuciková of Prague found buildings from her city in a fantasy town view in a drawing in the Groninger Museum. Alistair Laing of the National Trust identified an object from the Trust holdings as Dutch on the basis of comparison with a similar work in Dekema State. The hosts of CODART visits, the article tells, benefit from the knowledge of the participants in the matter of attributions.

A new CODART member from Havana is introduced, Oscar Antuña. He has been on the staff of the National Museum in Havana for fifteen years, but this is the first time that his director allowed him to leave the country on museum business. In Menkemaborg, he found himself on a property owned by Anna van Ewsum, a portrait of whom is in the collection of his museum. Wietske Donkersloot is quoted as saying that CODART provides a perfect opportunity for starting curators to meet their older, well-established colleagues, an opportunity that is being grasped by more and more museums.

Quentin Buvelot of the Mauritshuis tells the reporter that looking at art together “gives you tremendous confidence. It’s a kind of game, you measure yourself against your peers and you are forced to formulate your conjectures as well as possible.”