June 11 – September 24, 2023
Observations of the 400-year history of the Jews of Amsterdam by two master artists will be on view when the museum reopens in June. Created in radically different periods and by two non-Jews, the works of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) and Henk Pander (1937-2023) portray the evolving life of the Jews of Amsterdam in times of great change. This exhibition is curated by Adjunct Curator for Special Exhibitions Bruce Guenther.
Rembrandt’s Amsterdam enjoyed one of the greatest periods of prosperity and culture in history. The wealth of the Dutch Golden Age spurred the building of new canals and stylish neighborhoods to accommodate the rapid population growth of the city. Sephardic Jews, refugees of the Spanish Inquisition, had been the first to arrive. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, the majority of Jews in Amsterdam were Ashkenazi refugees fleeing persecution in central and eastern Europe.
Between 1639 and 1659, Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam’s prosperous Sephardic Jewish neighborhood. He accepted commissions for portraits of prominent Jews and studied Jewish theology to better understand and interpret the narrative of the Hebrew Bible. Rembrandt’s drawings of the daily activities of Jews and his paintings and prints of Hebrew subjects reveal his close relationship with the Jewish community in Amsterdam.
Henk Pander grew up in Haarlem during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and saw the destruction of the synagogue and the disappearance of the city’s Jews. On his return trips to Holland in later years, Pander conceived a series of paintings of Amsterdam, which gave powerful form to memories of the darkened, empty windows and silent doorways in the deserted Jewish neighborhoods at the end of the war. Pander reimagines the past as a vehicle to evoke the more than 100,000 Dutch Jews sent to death camps during the Holocaust. Rembrandt frequented the same streets and buildings, then bustling with life, in search of inspiration.
The 22 original etchings by Rembrandt are on loan from the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art and the six canvases by Henk Pander are on loan from the artist’s family. Publications about the artists will be available for purchase in the museum shop. The exhibition received support from the Craig E. Wollner Exhibition Fund and a grant from the Ford Family Foundation.