Dutch Heritage

“Dutch Heritage” was the inaugural exhibition of a five-part series mounted by the former Hermitage Amsterdam in the spring of 2022, at one of the most turbulent moments in the museum’s history. On 3 March 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the institution severed its fifteen-year partnership with the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (a branch of which it had operated since 2009), returned an unfinished exhibition of Russian avant-garde art, and began urgently reimagining its programme. Fellow Dutch institutions rallied in support, each lending a single masterpiece from their collections to sustain a new series through the autumn.

The Rijksmuseum contributed Vermeer’s The Milkmaid (c. 1660), one of the most celebrated paintings in its collection and among the rarest to leave the building. The previous loan had been in 2017. Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits framed the gesture in explicitly collegial terms: “Given the acute situation after the break with Russia, it seems to us self-evident that we would support our fellow museum. This is why we have decided to lend it one of the best pieces in the Rijksmuseum, Vermeer’s The Milkmaid.“ The painting was on view at the Amstel 51 building from 1 April to 15 May 2022, little more than a kilometre from its home. Annabelle Birnie, director of the Hermitage Amsterdam, called the loan “a fantastic and incredibly generous gesture” that gave the museum the footing it needed to reopen.

The presentation paired the canvas with an immersive sensory dimension, integrating music and scent to situate visitors in the domestic world Vermeer depicted. Subsequent instalments in the “Dutch Heritage” series brought works from the Van Gogh Museum, the Mauritshuis, and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen to Amstel 51 in turn, giving the venue a coherent identity as a showcase for the national collection while its longer-term future was negotiated. The museum eventually rebranded as the H’ART Museum on 1 September 2023, forging new partnerships with the British Museum, the Centre Pompidou, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.