Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution won this year’s Exhibition of the Year award by Apollo Magazine. According to the magazine, the exhibition’s biggest achievement was that “its curators realized more or less the grandest imaginable exhibition on its subject, in scope and scale, while allowing visitors a beguiling proximity to so many paintings by Jan van Eyck”.
The exhibition opened in Ghent on 1 February and closed due to Covid-19 on 13 March before its scheduled closing date in April. Almost 130,000 people were able to visit the exhibition before it closed. The exhibition was organized by Prof. dr. Maximiliaan Martens (UGent), Till-Holger Borchert (Director, Musea Brugge), Prof. dr. Jan Dumolyn (UGent), Johan De Smet (Curator, MSK Ghent) and Frederica Van Dam (Curator, MSK Ghent), with the assistance of Matthias Depoorter (MSK Ghent).
This year’s shortlist for Exhibition of the Year also included the Old Master exhibitions Pieter de Hooch in Delft: From the Shadow of Vermeer (Museum Prinsenhof, Delft), Leonardo da Vinci (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Artemisia (National Gallery, London).