Amid pandemic, Holland’s ‘hidden’ churches have an especially poignant message
On tension between private/interior spaces and public/exterior ones.
Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder interior. My photo from 2017.
Walking around the virtual ghost town that is Washington, D.C., over the past few months—during which I’ve seen façades of great museums without being able to access the art and artifacts within—reminds me of Holland’s clandestine churches. In Amsterdam, Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, which I visited three years ago, is among the best preserved such sacred spaces, which traces its origins back to the 16th century. Even knowing there’s a hidden sanctuary within doesn’t properly prepare visitors for the revelatory way the three joined row-house attics open up when you ascend those flights of stairs.
I write about all this in my latest National Catholic Reporter arts column, titled “Amid pandemic, Holland’s ‘hidden’ churches have an especially poignant message.” For the piece, I interviewed the curator of the church-museum, an excellent Dutch tour guide (whom I’ve met several times in Holland), and Poland-born American architect Daniel Libeskind. The latter told me:
Something everybody took for granted as just there and available—to step on the sidewalk, or to walk—suddenly, we realize there is something amazing about the earth, the sky, the trees, other people in front of us, and buildings. Things we’ve gotten used to appear in a wondrous perspective to us, even if we are scared or terrified by what is happening.