Vaarwel

Since April 2023, this blog has been highlighting the topic “Holland in Potsdam”. It came along with exhibitions, events and activities dedicated to Dutch influences in Brandenburg’s state capital until the late autumn of 2023. The end of the exhibition “Clouds and Light. Impressionism in Holland” at the Museum Barberini (8.7.-22.10.2023) also marked the end of the city-wide joint project “Holland in Potsdam”, which in addition to this blog also included an audio tour of the same name.

Following an initiative by the Museum Barberini and the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens, more than 20 cultural institutions and the state capital Potsdam joined forces for the first time to focus on Potsdam’s various connections to the Netherlands: from the Tulip Festival to the Palace Night, from the Cultural Festival to Horticulture.

The multifaceted nature of the programme was due to the participating cultural institutions, which included the Museum Barberini, the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens, the Potsdam Museum, the Jan Bouman House, the Lindenstraße Memorial Foundation, the Film Museum, the Förderverein Jagdschloss Stern, the Liebermann Villa on Wannsee and many others.

They all contributed with new events and articles each week to this blog, which was visited by almost 10,000 users from April to October 2023. The audio tour on the Barberini App, which was created together with the cultural institutions, led to 20 places with Dutch connections and was listened to by over 3,300 users during the seven-month period. Both the audio tour and the blog with over 50 editorial articles on Dutch references in Potsdam remain permanently available online.

“I am very excited that Potsdam’s cultural institutions celebrated the theme ‘Holland in Potsdam’ citywide in 2023, inspired by our exhibition. The positive response from the guests and the impact on the city is due to the great enthusiasm shown by all those involved in putting together the audio tour and blog, exhibitions, and events. We would like to thank all our colleagues from the cultural institutions, the Schlösserstiftung and the City of Potsdam for this wonderful, lively, and successful theme year,” says Ortrud Westheider, Director of the Museum Barberini.

The occasion for the theme year was the exhibition “Clouds and Light. Impressionism in Holland”, which the Museum Barberini showed from 8 July to 22 October 2023. Curated by Michael Philipp, chief curator at the Museum Barberini, the show examined how 19th-century Dutch painters were inspired by French influences to create their very own Dutch form of Impressionism. It was the first exhibition devoted to the subject and brought together around 100 works by 40 artists, including key works by Johan Barthold Jongkind, Vincent van Gogh, Jacoba van Heemskerck and Piet Mondrian that had hardly been shown in Germany before. The lenders included the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Dordrechts Museum, the Kröller Müller Museum in Otterlo and the Singer Museum in Laren.

Thank you for coming along with us! Vaarwel!

Photos: Mathias Voelzke, Steven Ritzer, Sebastian Bolesch
Header Image: Peter Raddatz