Visitors continue to pack their bags for the Vermeer blockbuster at the Rijksmuseum which runs until June 4 (get a ticket if you can – good luck). A correspondent of The arts journal was lucky enough to win entry to the show last week and was naturally won over by the many masterpieces on display (more than 20). But there were still collective gasps from the crowd of mainly upper-middle-class Britons upon discovering that Vermeer’s most famous work, The girl with the pearl (c. 1665), had returned home to the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The museum makes it clear online and in the exhibit that the crowd-pleasing painting was due March 30 (it can also be explored in the museum’s informative online exhibit tour). The painting was still going to be on display for eight weeks, Mauritshuis director Martine Gosselink said. Dutch News. “We said it from the start and the Rijksmuseum knew it too,” she said. But that won’t stop the hordes of disgruntled Vermeer devotees from grumbling (perhaps buying a postcard is the answer).
