CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

CODART and HNA Joint Session

Re-visioning Permanent Collection Installations of Netherlandish Art: Dialogues between Academia, Museum and Society

Audio recordings of the joint session are available on this page.

The 2022 conference of the Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) concluded with a plenary joint session with CODART, in the auditorium of the Rijksmuseum on 4 June 2022.

Museums and collection departments all over the world – including those of Netherlandish art – are having to confront new and increasingly urgent questions. For whom was that art actually created? To what extent does that art reflect, challenge, or confirm societal relations as they existed in the past or still apply today? What role do museums and universities see themselves as playing in the choices they make when researching and displaying Netherlandish art from the past in today’s society? And how does this affect the way museums and departments of Netherlandish art operate?

Program

The first round is moderated by Suzanne van de Meerendonk (Bader Curator of European Art, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada) and will focus on a number of museums that are currently restructuring their permanent collection, or engaged in deliberations about it. Nico Van Hout (Head of Collection Research and Curator of Seventeenth Century Paintings, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp), Dorine Maat (Junior Curator, Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam) and Michele Frederick (Associate Curator of European Art, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh) discuss the questions they are encountering in the course of this work – relating both to matters of principle and practical challenges – and how they are dealing with them?

In the second round, led by Professor Dr. Frans Grijzenhout (University of Amsterdam and Chair of the Organizing Committee of the HNA conference), the focus will shift to questions of terminology: what words and concepts do we use to broach the questions that are arising in today’s cultural landscape and to ensure balance in the way we interpret the history of Northern and Southern Netherlandish art in today’s society? Jacquelyn N. Coutré (Eleanor Wood Prince Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1750, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago), Denise Campbell (Curatorial Assistant and member of the terminology group, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and Carrie Anderson (Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture, Middlebury College, Vermont) will participate in this discussion.

Quentin Buvelot (Senior Curator, Mauritshuis, The Hague) serves as chair for the third and final round that will look at museums’ policies on their acquisitions and the way they display artworks: what do we still want – and what do we perhaps no longer want – to purchase and display? How should we respond to the fast-changing market conditions for alternative acquisitions? And how do we view the relationship between art and history in the new pressures that are influencing the museum environment? Participants of the third round are Joaneath Spicer (The James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art, Walters Art Museum in Baltimore), Charles Kang (Curator of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Drawings, Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam), and Jeroen van der Vliet (Head of Collections, Het Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam).

Reception and museum visit

After the joint session you are invited to stay for the concluding reception of the HNA conference in the foyer, which will take place from 17:15-18:30h. Participants are also offered the opportunity to visit the Gallery of Honour and the 17th century department of the Rijksmuseum until 19:00h.

Registration

Registration for the CODART and HNA joint session is open for CODART and HNA members and free of charge. We kindly request that all CODART members who are not already attending the HNA conference register for this session by sending an email to events@codart.nl.

Contact CODART

For questions about this event, please contact the CODART office:
Moos Engelbertink
events@codart.nl
+31 70 406 9380

This session is made possible by: