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Month: May 2019

The Royal Rabbit

The Royal Rabbit

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During the Napoleonic Wars, the Emperor Napoleon in the interests of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, made his brother Louis king of the Netherlands. OK, it was mostly Fraternity. Louis, instead of declaring himself Koning van Holland (King of Holland) he announce that he was Konijn van Olland (Rabbit of Olland). The Netherlands had previously been a republic, so there wasn’t royal palace for Louis to move into. Instead he took over the Amsterdam town hall, and had it done up…

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Diamonds and Boats

Diamonds and Boats

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We started the day with a visit to the Gassan Diamond factory. I’d always imagined that “cutting” diamonds involved some sort of blade but it turns out that it is mostly grinding and polishing rather than cutting. Yeah, there’s a diamond in that clamp somewhere. The whole diamond market is a scam, with a cartel of suppliers maintaining artificially high prices, but, hey, shiny! Our tour guide seemed intent on getting through the presentation as fast as possible, but he…

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Tropical Topics

Tropical Topics

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OK, trivia question. What was the first mention in literature of metallic female robots? The answer will be somewhere in today’s post, so now you’ll have to read the whole thing and not just look at the pictures. Today we visited the Tropenmuseum. The collection started out to investigate the best ways to exploit Dutch overseas conquests in the tropics, but these days it is an extended apology for Dutch colonial history. The ethnographic artifacts are mostly from Indonesia, South…

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The Hermitage

The Hermitage

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The real Hermitage Museum is in St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), Russia, but they have a branch office, or as they call it a Space Station, in Amsterdam. Here they show a selection of items from mission control, rotated every six months, as well as Dutch paintings borrowed from the other collections in town. The current exhibition features pairs of similar objects from different time periods or cultures. It’s good to see the cross-cultural importance of battle swans. OK, the second…

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Concertgebouw

Concertgebouw

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Today we are having a rest day, with only the thrills of hauling a suitcase full of groceries up three flights of near vertical stairs to report on. Instead of describing my plans for an ice cream and massage parlor on the second landing, I want to tell you about the concert we went to last night. We were in the main hall of the famous Royal Concertgebouw for an evening of Russian music: Shostakovich’s second cello concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov’s…

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Dave and Vince

Dave and Vince

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This is the final weekend of an exhibition of David Hockney at the Van Gogh Museum. Hockney’s swimming pool works? His LA’s beautiful people themes? Nope, it’s all about his extensive investigations into landscape. We had experienced some of his multi-screen videography of Yorkshire when the deYoung in SF hosted an exhibit. But this was much more extensive and allowed a deeper exploration of how humans see.  Sadly, the Van Gogh Museum doesn’t allow photography (which may be why Andrew…

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Home of the Loons

Home of the Loons

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Ambling between the Museum van Loon and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCO) we came across an artistic disaster that belongs in neither. Yes, it’s The Night Watch redone in bathroom tiles. That in itself is not a bad thing. Who would not want to contemplate Dead Chicken Girl while soaking in the tub after a long day polishing a musket? But look more closely. Dead Chicken Girl no longer has a dead chicken dangling from her armpit. How can…

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Rembrandt’s House

Rembrandt’s House

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This is us with our best souvenir of this trip, a copy of one of Rembrandt’s etchings, printed while we watched in the room where Rembrandt made his prints. Thanks Eric! Today we visited the house were Rembrandt lived and worked for almost twenty years, until his bankruptcy in 1658. Luckily for antiquarians, the bankruptcy proceedings required a complete inventory of the contents of the house, and that record has allowed it to be restored to pretty much the state…

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Let’s Go Somewhere There’s Cheese

Let’s Go Somewhere There’s Cheese

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Let’s take that successful painting by a master of light and shade, and remake it in 3D broad daylight without any color, said nobody ever except the City of Amsterdam. Dear readers, I give you The Nightwatch 3D… … starring Dead Chicken Girl. But that was yesterday. Today we went on a coach trip though the Dutch countryside. Flat as a stroopwafel, cow-encumbered, goose-infested, criss-crossed with canals, and much of it below sea level. First stop was the Henri Willig…

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Many Museums

Many Museums

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Today was a four museum day, and at this point there are all blurring into one another, so I’m just going to do the highlights. My favorite was the Cromhouthuis (pronounced something like Crum Outhouse) a fine family house owned by rich merchants. None of the original contents are still there apart from a few glasses, but the house has been filled with a random mix of art and antiques bought and bequeathed from other collectors. They have antique silver……

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