Amster-Hot-Damn : Day II

Although tired, we began our second day in Amsterdam right -- with a Piggy-provided breakfast. While we were able to gorge on bread with jam, peanut butter, and nutella, cornflakes, and an egg, we missed out on our croissants and felt mightily cheated.

Since our time in the city was limited, particularly since my conference took up two of the seven days we were there, we needed to make the most of it. That meant a hard-core schedule of two world class museums before conference registration in the afternoon.



Vincent Van Gogh, Almond Blossom, 1890 (for some reason the images from the museum don't want to come up so this one is from the Artchive)

Our first stop was the Van Gogh Museum. This huge collection, housed in a recently refurbished building, laid out the work of that tormented master from his early days as an artist through to his last. It also had quite an impressive collection of works by contemporaries/influences/followers, even if there wasn't too much of the non-Van Gogh on display. Several things struck me during my visit. First was how talented Vincent actually was. Ok, maybe it sounds a bit obvious to say "Van Gogh was a talented painter" but what struck me was his amazing skill, not only in paint-handling but also (as was brought out in the massive temporary exhibit Van Gogh Draughtsman: The Masterpieces) in his drawing ability - i never really considered him much of a draughtsman, not that I didn't think he could draw, but rather so much attention is given to the paint that I never gave it any thought. This was compounded by the fact that he was more-or-less entirely self-taught and just "decided" to become an artist after failing as a preacher. Another thing that stuck me was number of distinct styles that he adopted and used for a while before moving on to something quite different in his short artistic career (which went from 1880 to 1890). This was well brought out by the chronological arrangement of the galleries which were divided into the five stages of his development. Lastly, I was stuck by the efforts of Johanna Van Gogh, the wife of Vincent's brother Theo, to get the work of Vincent known. Theo, Vincent's stalwart supporter died six months after Vincent, and it was Johanna who went to great lengths to get their letters published.

Once we were done with Vincent (and after Laura had a little nap while waiting for me to get through the last gallery) we headed out to find some lunch before more art. We wandered a rather swanky street (Jan Luijkenstraat???) until we found an Italian deli (I didn't get the name) where we had a couple of the tastiest, most filling sandwiches to be found anywhere. Rejuvenated by our meal we headed to the Rijksmuesum.

Ok, I'll start with a disclaimer: I am not a fan of Dutch art in general. Yeah, some people dig it, but as my friend Maria and I concluded ages ago, Dutch art is all about boats, windmills, and rotting fruit. And I am not really into any of that. Ok, so maybe that is a bit of an overstatement (but not much) and I do appreciate Rembrandt and Vermeer and a handful of others, and that those still-lifes have a lot more going on than first appears with the memento mori and so forth, but by and large to me it is just meh. And that was pretty much my impression of the whole museum. Meh. Don't get me wrong. The Rijks is one of the greatest museums in the world and I am very glad to have had the opportunity to have visited it. I just don't really like the art they have on show. To be fair I know they do have stuff I like, but during their major renovations they are focusing on just the highlights. Of Dutch Art. The three Vermeers were extraordinary and the Nightwatch was duly impressive, the Deftware was interesting. As for the rest of it...well, glad to have seen it but really not gonna rush back. One artist that they showed three or four works that I do like was Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (the image to the left is his St. Bravo Church, Haarlem of 1636) so it was good to see them, (although there is a painting of the same church from 12 years later in the National Gallery of Scotland that I like much better.)

After our whirlwind tour through the Golden Age of Dutch Art it was time to head to the university to register for the Conference. That didn't take to long so we headed back to the hostel to freshen up before going to the City Councilor's Chamber at the Amsterdam City Hall for a reception to kick off the conference. We found the building no problem at all. Getting in, however, proved to be much more difficult. They marked two entrances on the tiny, crappy photocopied map they gave us and then didn't think it would be useful to put up a little sign anywhere showing us which door to go in. After wandering around for a while one of the people working on the local arrangements recognized us and showed us the way. Apparently there was a welcome and a bit of a talk, but we missed that. We did, however, make it in time for free drinks and hors d'oeuvres. We chatted with some archival types on the balcony for a little while before getting kicked out.

There were two keynote speakers scheduled following a dinner break so we didn't wander to far to find something to eat. We ended up at a restaurant called Szmulewicz. I haven't a clue how to pronounce that, but I do know the food was very good.

I don't know who thought scheduling two keynote speakers at 7:30pm after an open bar and a meal was a good idea, but if they asked my opinion I would have suggested that they do it before they gave us the booze. The speakers were alright, discussing the relationships between American and British/European archivists and historians, but I they didn't really have my full attention given that we had quite a long day, a number of bevies, and it was really warm in the lecture theatre. As you will see this became a running theme for the conference (well I didn't drink before the other sessions, but the tired/hot combination did play havoc with my attention span throughout the following days - I am quite glad that they plan to publish the conference papers in the future, but would have liked it if they would have given us the pre-prints like they did for the last one). Following a bit of discussion, I headed back to the Flying Pig where we hung out for a bit before heading to bed where I tried to get some rest for the big days of conferencing ahead.