The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is celebrating the most visited exhibition in its history after welcoming 650,000 visitors to its blockbuster Vermeer show.
The museum has broken its own record despite limiting visitor numbers. The exhibition, which closed on 4 June, drew 650,000 visitors from 113 nations during its 16-week run.
“Vermeer is the artist of peacefulness and intimacy,” said Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum’s general director.
650,000 visitors to Vermeer show
“We wanted the visitors to enjoy it to the fullest,” Dibbits added. “This was only possible by limiting the number of visitors. The Rijksmuseum is grateful for the generous loans from museums around the world that have enabled it to bring together more works by Vermeer than ever before.”
Designed by architect and designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the Vermeer exhibition featured works including ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ and ‘The Milkmaid’.
It also included seven Vermeer paintings that had never before been on public display in the Netherlands, three of which came from New York‘s Frick Collection.
More than half (55 percent) of visitors to the exhibition came from the Netherlands, while 17 percent came from France, 16 percent from Germany, 16 percent from the UK, and 14 percent from the US.
Additionally, more than 100,000 copies of the Vermeer catalogue have been sold – more than any other exhibition catalogue in the history of the Rijksmuseum.
From 7 June through 10 October, six paintings by Vermeer will remain on view at the the museum, including ‘Girl with the Red Hat’ from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and ‘Young Woman Seated at a Virginal’ from the Leiden Collection in New York.
The Rijksmuseum is dedicated to Dutch art and history. It is the largest art museum in the Netherlands and boasts a collection of 1.1 million items.
Lead image credit: Rijksmuseum / Kelly Schenk
