Fleeting – Scents in Colour

Exhibition in the Mauritshuis, The Hague
as soon as the museum opens – 29 August 2021

Have you ever wondered what an Amsterdam canal smelled like 400 years ago? It would have been pretty grim: excrement, waste materials and all kinds of filth were dumped into the water. The same water that poorer housewives then did their laundry in. Personal and general hygiene were far from what they are today. People were convinced that foul smells could harm their health. Luckily there were all kinds of tricks for disguising unpleasant smells and situations. Wealthy women carried a pomander on a chain, then an expensive fashion accessory. As well as looking good, this also meant they could also protect themselves against dangerous odours.

Special about the exhibition Fleeting – Scents in Colour is a voyage of discovery via the various scent dispensers to scents from bygone times that are depicted in the paintings. A clean linen cupboard, bleaching fields, ambergris, myrrh and of course the foul-smelling canals.

For this exhibition, the Hoogsteder Museum Foundation has organised the following loan:

JACOB TOORENVLIET
The Young Woman and the Fishmonger
Oil on canvas, 40.2 x 32.8 cm

You can also have this unique experience at home with the fragrance box that will soon be available in the Mauritshuis webshop. For more information, please visit the MAURISTHUIS website.

The walled city

HISTORY OF A CITY DEFENSE
Exhibition in Centraal Museum, Utrecht

12 September 2020 – 17 January 2021
(From Tuesday to Sunday, 11-17 hrs)

For this exhibition, the Hoogsteder Museum Foundation has organised two loans:

JAN VAN HUCHTENBURG
Equestrian fight between Europeans and Ottomans
Oil on canvas, 82.5 x 104.4 cm

FRANS VAN DER MEULEN
The Crossing of the Rhine at Lobith in June 1672
Oil on canvas, 105,7 x 170 cm

Can’t wait to learn more about this exhibition? Through this link, you can listen the exhibition podcast (Dutch only).

For more information, please visit the CENTRAAL MUSEUM website.