May 15th 2019
We could still use the canal boat tickets we bought yesterday, so we made use of the opportunity to cruise over the canals to visit the Rijksmuseum on the opposite side of the city. The Rijksmuseum is a real tourist attraction. And since we were totally immersing ourselves in being tourists, of course we had to go there. It was very crowded at the museum due to a special Rembrandt exhibition. Patiently we stepped in the ticket line to await our turn. While waiting we tried to book tickets online, sometimes that helps to speed up your entrance. Unfortunately this time it didn’t really work because you had to book a time slot for the special Rembrandt exhibition before you could purchase a ticket. The time slots were fully booked for the next two weeks and you couldn’t get a ticket without reserving a time slot. Bit of a conundrum. But luckily the line progressed quite fast so it didn’t took that long to wait. To our disappointment the cashier told us when it was our turn we have stood in line needlessly, because we have a museum card. “But” she said “I can console you that you haven’t waited in vain, because if you want to I can give you entrance tickets to visit the special Rembrandt exhibition this afternoon. We have a few left.” With that stroke of luck we entered the museum.
The Rijksmuseum has Rembrandt’s ‘Night watch’ on display, their most famous show piece. Visitors come from all over the world come to see this painting, to such an extent that people literally are running towards the painting, pushing visitors aside to get a better view and ignoring all the other fabulous and famous works in the same space like Vermeer’s ‘Milkmaid’ for instance. An embarrassing sight to see. There is always an enormous crowd in front of the painting, almost worshipping it, whereas the rest of the space is relatively empty. As if all the other works don’t matter.
To be honest, we liked ‘The milkmaid’ better in real life than the ‘Night watch’. We were happily surprised by the works of Hendrik de Keyser, an artist we hadn’t heard of before. He wasn’t just an artist, but the city architect as well. The Zuiderkerk as well as the Westerkerk in Amsterdam are his design. No architecture of de Keyser in the Rijksmuseum, just art. We especially liked a painting of a violin player and a small sculpture of a child’s head stung by a bee.
The special Rembrandt exhibition was a bit disappointing. The exhibition space was packed, and we don’t mean packed with works. It had been crowded at the ‘Night watch’, but that was nothing in comparison to this exhibition. It was so full of people you could hardly even see the works. And the works on display being mostly tiny sketches, drawings and etchings didn’t make it easier to see them. Now Rembrandt’s drawings are truly beautiful, but this is not the way to appreciate them. We quickly left the exhibition space filled with mostly anti-social elderly people who were ruthlessly shoving people aside.
The Rijksmuseum nowadays also has a more contemporary department, which was a relief after all the religious medieval art and self-glorification of the 17th century. We really enjoyed ‘The Flattening of the brook’s surface’ a short movie by Ger van Elk who is trying to flatten the surface of a brook whilst paddling with a rubber boat.
After our visit we walked back through the city, ate grilled chicken wings in sunshine and took the ferry back to the marina. Maybe Amsterdam starts to grow on us.
