Masterpieces from the MFA Boston on display at High Museum

From April 19 to July 14, 2024, the High Museum of Art hosts the exhibition “Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston”

Source: High Museum of Art · Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh (detail), 1632. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Promised gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art.

In the 17th century, Dutch merchants joined maritime trade networks stretching from Asia to the Americas and Africa. This unprecedented movement of goods, ideas, and people — both free and enslaved — gave rise to the first age of globalization, and the art of this period continues to be greatly admired. This exhibition brings together paintings — still lifes, portraits, seascapes, landscapes, architectural views and genre scenes — as well as prints, maps and decorative arts spanning the 17th and the first half of the 18th century.

The more than 100 works featured, by the period’s leading artists including Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Willem Kalf and Rachel Ruysch, are presented through the lens of global exchange. These artworks show how Dutch dominance in international commerce transformed life in the Netherlands and created an extraordinary cultural flourishing. The exhibition emphasizes artistic achievement while encouraging visitors to consider the human costs of global expansion. By addressing these complex histories through up-to-date scholarship, the exhibition contextualizes 17th-century Dutch art in a fresh and compelling way. Many of the works are recent gifts or loans from Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, whose donations have elevated the Dutch holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to among the finest in the world.

This exhibition is organized in partnership with the Center for Netherlandish Art (CNA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Through an expansive library, a residency fellowship program, and an active slate of public and academic programs, the CNA shares Dutch and Flemish art with wide audiences in Boston and beyond; stimulates multidisciplinary research and object-based learning; nurtures future generations of scholars and curators in the field; and expands public appreciation of Netherlandish art — especially works from the 17th century.