I visited the Boijmans Musuem in Rotterdam this morning, it was like a journey through time.
The first exhibition was a display of craft through the Middle Ages, so you're looking at beautifully made dishes made from bronze and brass, next to glass beakers, next to glazed tiles and carved timber furniture ... all 500 or more years old.
Then you walk into a room with a contemporary artwork by Wim T. Chippers, which was essentially a 3x12m timber board smothered in Peanut Butter ... imagine the smell! It was appropriately titled 'Peanut Butter Platform'.
Next, paintings and prints from the 17th through 20th centuries ... everything from impressionism to surrealism.
To complete the story, there is an exhibition presenting images and audio-visual displays relating to the latest science and technology. Most profound was a short documentary showing a sequence of ultrasounds of human babies, from a gestation period of 8 weeks to 34 weeks. In a word: phenomenal.
It reminds me of my experience of visiting the modern art gallery and technical museum in Prague. These institutions have incredible access to high quality material because much of what they are presenting, especially with art history, happened right here. In reality it makes Europe the perfect place to learn, and probably it has always been this way.
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