Masters from the Mauritshuis: Six Centuries of Art Under One Roof

On 28 April 2012 the Mauritshuis closed for a major renovation and expansion designed by architect Hans van Heeswijk. The project connected the museum’s seventeenth-century palace on the Korte Vijverberg with a wing of the adjacent Sociëteit de Witte building via an underground foyer, nearly doubling the museum’s floor area. The Mauritshuis reopened on 27 June 2014 after more than two years of building work.

Rather than leave the public without access to the collection, the Mauritshuis struck a partnership with the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (now Kunstmuseum Den Haag), a short distance away on the Stadhouderslaan. From the day of closure, approximately one hundred highlights from the royal picture gallery went on view there under the title “Meesters uit het Mauritshuis“ (”Masters from the Mauritshuis“). The display included Vermeer’s View of Delft, Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, and The Bull by Paulus Potter. Director Emilie Gordenker was explicit about the decision: “We have always said that the core of the collection would remain on display in The Hague during the renovation.“

A separate, smaller touring exhibition drawn from the Mauritshuis simultaneously traveled internationally, carrying around fifty works to Japan (the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and the Kobe City Museum) in 2012, and then approximately thirty of those paintings onward to the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Frick Collection in New York in 2013 and 2014. The touring group was anchored by Girl with a Pearl Earring and Carel Fabritius’s The Goldfinch. View of Delft, one of the most celebrated and physically imposing canvases in the entire collection, remained in The Hague for the duration, allowing visitors to the Gemeentemuseum to see it throughout the closure period. The international tour drew a combined audience of some 2.2 million visitors.