Old Masters, New Questions
Ever since the nineteenth century, the public image of Dutch identity has been shaped in relation to its lost “Golden Age”. National, local, and provincial museums have highlighted key aspects of Dutch art and culture. Although the self-styled image of the Dutch Republic as a miracle of wealth and tolerance has been critically corrected over the past few decades, the quality of the art production itself during the “long seventeenth century has never been seriously disputed. Still, new questions are being raised on aspects of its representation of society, on the economic, social, and financial foundations of the art production, and on the supposed autonomy of the aesthetic domain. How does this reflect on the installation and presentation of Dutch art from this period in museums in the Netherlands and elsewhere?

Frans Grijzenhout

University of Amsterdam
Frans Grijzenhout is professor emeritus of art history at the University of Amsterdam (retired 2022). He worked for years as a curator of exhibitions for the Dutch government, a consultant to Dutch museums, and Director of the State School for Conservation. He has published widely on the relationship between art and politics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the early history of the Rijksmuseum, and on the concept of heritage. In more recent years he has focused on studying individual artworks from the Dutch seventeenth century, like Jan Steen’s Burgomaster of Delft and Vermeer’s Little Street.