While there is no doubt that I take too many photos when I visit museums, it is with a sad sense of irony that I am reliving visiting so many exhibitions while working on these posts at the same time that all of country’s museums have been closed since March 16 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is predicted that one-third of Dutch museums will file bankruptcy due to this global disaster. In the meantime, I will continue with the trip down memory lane...
At the end of September, I spent a day in Utrecht. I started with a visit to the Utrecht Archives Museum in the former St Paul’s Abbey. There was a cool exhibit about the start of the national railway. I especially enjoyed an exciting “carriage ride” through the old city.
My next stop was the Museum Catharijne Convent, housed in a medieval monastery. Biblical art doesn’t interest me much, so I went through the main collection very quickly.
I would have enjoyed the special exhibit about how the Dutch celebrate holidays more if there were English translations as there were elsewhere in the museum, but I didn’t need a translation for the birth of Jesus, complete with the three kings on Segways...
...and Joseph and Mary posing for a selfie.
Eventually I made it over to the Centraal Museum, my primary destination to see a fashion exhibit. By far the strangest part of the permanent collection were these surreal paintings by J.H. Moesman, an Utrecht artist who died in 1988 and was clearly obsessed with sex, fetishism and taboos.
In comparison,
Bottled Humanism by Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo in 1962 seemed mild.
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