Hermitage Amsterdam celebrates tenth anniversary with two grand jubilee exhibitions
Hermitage Amsterdam celebrates tenth anniversary with two grand jubilee exhibitions
Treasury! 2 February – 25 August 2019; Jewels! 14 September – 15 March 2020In 2019 Hermitage Amsterdam celebrates the tenth anniversary of its opening. The anniversary will be marked by a whole year of special events and activities, including not just one, but two major jubilee exhibitions: Treasury! and Jewels!
Treasury! Masterpieces from the Hermitage
The jubilee year will start with Treasury! – a wide-ranging, kaleidoscopic overview of top pieces from the many different collections of the State Hermitage. The show is the result of meticulous preparation over a long period and will be a glittering feast of 25,000 years of art history. The masterpieces on show will represent cultures and movements extending in time from earliest prehistory right through to the 21st century. Visitors will experience an amazing journey through time and space, covering half the planet, from the Netherlands to China and from northern Siberia to Egypt. Hermitage Amsterdam is able to present an exhibition of such wide geographical and art-historical scope thanks to its partnership with the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. With holdings of over three million objects, the State Hermitage is one of the few truly encyclopaedic museums in the world.
The over 250 exhibits will include masterpieces by big
names like Bernini, Da Vinci, Dürer, Van Dyck, Fabre, Matisse, Rembrandt,
Thorvaldsen, Tintoretto, Velázquez and Van der Weyden, but also works by
lesser-known artists of startling talent. Visitors will experience an unique
tour of art history that will not only include items from prehistory, the
Greco-Roman world and the art of both Western Europe and the Orient, but will
even encompass arms and armour, ancient books and manuscripts, the decorative
arts and contemporary art. Adopting an innovative approach, the exhibition will
present art objects from a wide range of periods and cultures in playful
pairings that will surprise and delight by their visual or other similarities
and differences in culture and period. The experience will incite visitors to
adopt a more open-minded and attentive attitude to art. The second part of the
exhibition will be a fascinating peregrination through all the departments and
collections of the State Hermitage. The exhibition is scheduled to run from 2
February to 25 August 2019.
Jewels!
The Hermitage’s fabulous jewellery collection is one
of its greatest treasures. Over the centuries it has become the repository of
thousands of precious pieces. In the autumn of 2019, hundreds of them will
travel to the Netherlands to feature in Jewels!
Visitors will encounter flamboyant female rulers like Elizabeth of Russia and
Catherine the Great, but also grand dukes and noble families of the nineteenth
and early twentieth century. They had their portraits painted by leading
artists and on special occasions they wore dazzling gowns and ensembles set off
by carefully selected bijoux. Jewels
were a statement of identity and a demonstration of taste, breeding and wealth.
Occasionally, they might also be designed to provoke or contain hidden
symbolism. They were ordered from European jewellery firms like Boucheron or
Cartier, master goldsmiths like Claude Ballin or, of course, from Fabergé,
Goldsmith by Special Appointment to the Imperial Crown. The exhibits will
reflect the fashions of four centuries: baroque, rococo, neoclassical, empire, art nouveau and modern, also from the 21th century.
Jewels! is
scheduled to run from 14 September 2019 to 15 March 2020.
Hermitage Amsterdam
Communication, Education & Marketing Department
Martijn van Schieveen, Madeline
van Vliet
+31 (0)20 530 87 55 | pressoffice@hermitage.nl | hermitage.nl/en/press/