The successful Johannes Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which closed on June 4, attracted 650,000 visitors, making it the museum’s most visited exhibition. The standard entry price for the show, which ran for 16 weeks, was €30.
More than half (55%) of visitors came from the Netherlands; visitors also came from France (7.7%), Germany (7.2%), the United Kingdom (7.2%) and the United States (6.3%).
The exhibition featured 28 of the 37 works by the Dutch Old Master, including The milk girl And The girl with the pearl, which was returned to the Mauritshuis in The Hague in March. Crucially, the Rijksmuseum also improved three paintings including girl with a flute (1664-67 or later) from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Taco Dibbits, general manager of the Rijksmuseum, said in a press release: “We wanted visitors to get the most out of it. This was only possible by limiting the number of visitors. The Rijksmuseum is grateful for generous loans from museums around the world that have enabled it to collect more works by Vermeer than ever before.
“Even though it was a logistical miracle to squeeze three-quarters of Vermeer’s production into a single exhibition, 28 is still very few paintings to hang in a large exhibition space. Luckily for us, curators Gregor JM Weber and Pieter Roelofs kept their cool and trusted ‘less is more’,” writes novelist Tracy Chevalier in our Great review.
More than 100,000 copies of Vermeer catalogue, priced at €35, were also sold, more than any other exhibition catalog in the history of the Rijksmuseum. Various research projects were also initiated during the exhibition. One such project concluded from The milk girl“The box and cardboard visible in the underpainting, but not in the final painting, indicate that Vermeer continued to pursue tranquility and perfect composition during the painting process,” reads a project brief.
Although the exhibition is closed, Vermeer fans can still enjoy themselves: from June 7 to October 10, six paintings by the artist will remain on display in the Honor Gallery of the Rijksmuseum. The girl in the red hat (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.) and Young woman in the virginal (The Leiden Collection, New York) will be exhibited alongside works by Vermeer from the Rijksmuseum collection.
