Rijksmuseum

Having worked in a museum I watched Oeke Hoogendijk’s ‘The New Rijksmuseum’, a documentary about that museum’s painful refurbishment , budget and personnel woes – a decade-long bureaucratic nightmare, with interest. We didn’t go last time, it was a Van Gogh blockbuster and every conceivable object in teh shops was being sold with garish reproductions (of what can be garish paintings).

So this time it was on our hit list – decided to see the De Hooch and Vermeer first at opening time before the crowds.

Though Rembrandt’s Nightwatch dominating the end wall had the most pull. I preferred the details in his hat in Self portrait as the apostle Paul, 1661.

No visit is complete without a visit to the gardens – play is an important aesthetic category.