The Low Countries glow in Boston

The MFA’s new Dutch and Flemish galleries sparkle—and confess.

A kind-of map with which to “read” the newly-reinstalled Dutch and Flemish galleries at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston surfaces in Rogier van der Weyden’s maybe-self-portrait “Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin” (c. 1435-40).

Zeroing in on aspects of the picture, one finds hints of Netherlandish specialties that developed 200 years later, according to Frederick Ilchman, the MFA’s European art chair. That includes attention to faces (tronies, character studies), checkerboard-floored interiors (Vermeer), flower groupings in a meadow (kernels of Dutch still-lives), a seascape, and “superb” light hitting fabrics.

Rogier van der Weyden. “Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin” (MFA Boston)/my photo

Beyond, the new galleries—which nearly double the museum’s Dutch and Flemish holdings, adding 114 donations, promised gifts, and loans from two collecting couples, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie—are very impressive. And the museum’s new Center for Netherlandish Art (with a 43,000-volume-strong library) promises to become a scholarly center for the study of Dutch and Flemish art.

But, as I write in a piece for artnet “The MFA Boston’s Sparkling New Dutch and Flemish Galleries Don’t Shy Away From the Big Political Question: Whose Golden Age Was It?” the museum also undermines its own displays deliberately. On several occasions, MFA curators flag for the viewer issues related to slavery and colonialism, which they feel is essential context for understanding these works. As I found in my reporting, others disagree.

Arthur Wheelock, former longtime National Gallery northern Baroque curator and University of Maryland art historian, told me that he believes there has been an over-correction in the way museums have distanced themselves from the notion of the Dutch Golden Age.

One of the new galleries at the MFA/my photo

Wheelock believes there are “humanizing messages” of dignity, love, and faith in Dutch and Flemish art. “They teach one about the complexities of life,” he told me. “I think it’s important to be able to speak out and say, ‘These are important. They remain important. We can all take messages from them to guide us.’”

Again, the artnet piece appears here.