Symposium to focus on Dutch Golden Age Art, Climate, Culture, and Innovation

Fri, Oct 18 - Fri, Oct 18  2019

An upcoming symposium at the New Bedford Whaling Museum will explore themes and artworks featured in the Museum’s exhibition De Wind is Op! Climate, Culture and Innovation in Dutch Maritime Painting. The exhibition looks at the Whaling Museum’s extraordinary collections of Golden Age Dutch and Flemish paintings through a fresh lens. These treasures are interpreted around the themes of wind, climate, innovation, and the sea as drivers behind a uniquely Dutch national identity of this period. During the De Wind is Op Symposium on Saturday, October 18, 2019 scholars and experts representing a variety of disciplines will discuss these themes in greater depth. Whaling Museum partners for the De Wind is Op Symposium are the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Harvard Art Museums, and the Dutch Culture USA Program of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The symposium is open to the public and runs from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Cost to attend is $50 for Whaling Museum members, $65 for non-members, and $25 for students with a college ID. The Whaling Museum is located at 18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford. Registration information and the symposium schedule are at www.whalingmuseum.org.

Registration is from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on October 18. The symposium will open with remarks by Christina Connett Brophy PhD, The Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Chair for the Chief Curator at the Whaling Museum, and Roger Mandle, PhD Co-Founder of Design Art Technology Massachusetts (DATMA), Former Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Art, and former President of the Rhode Island School of Design. Dr. Connett Brophy and Dr. Mandle co-curated the exhibition and will provide an overview of the De Wind is Op artworks and themes.

Hendrick de Leth, View of Zaandam from the IJ, 1728-1731. Courtesy of the Whaling Museum.

Symposium presenters include Arthur Wheelock, Jr., Senior Advisor to The Leiden Collection; Lawrence Otto Goedde, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Art, University of Virginia; Chet Van Duzer, Researcher in Residence, John Carter Brown Library, Providence; Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, Stanley H. Durwood Curatorial Fellow, Harvard Art Museums;  Antien Knaap, Curatorial Research Fellow at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Benjamin Weiss, Director of Collections and Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Visual Culture, at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The De Wind is Op Symposium is supported by Deborah and William R. Elfers. De Wind is Op! Climate, Culture and Innovation in Dutch Maritime Painting is on view at the New Bedford Whaling Museum until summer 2020.