The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam said over the weekend that there are no more tickets left for the Johannes Vermeer retrospective. This crushed the hopes of many people from all over the world who had hoped to see the first-of-its-kind show. The Rijksmuseum said on Sunday, just two days after the show opened to the public, that there are no more tickets for Vermeer. "There are only a certain number of tickets available so that everyone can have a good time at the show." But the museum wrote that it was "working hard to make sure more people have the chance to see the exhibition" as a hint that it would find ways to let more people see the show.
Since the Rijksmuseum said in 2021 that the Vermeer show would be the "first and last" retrospective of the artist's work, people have been very excited about it. There's a good reason for this kind of exaggeration: there has never been a Vermeer show with more works. Experts have also paid close attention to the show because it has led to new research about Vermeer. Along with this scholarship, there have been efforts to look at old information about Vermeer. For example, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, took Vermeer's name off of one of its paintings. The show at the Rijksmuseum still shows that painting as a real Vermeer, though. The show at the Rijksmuseum has gotten a lot of praise. Jason Farago of the New York Times wrote, "Really, the show is almost perfect: perfectly argued, perfectly paced, and as clear and pure as the light coming through those Delft windows." Adrian Searle, a critic for The Guardian, gave the show five stars and said, "The last big Vermeer show, in The Hague, was a feverish, crowded affair. Here, there's room for the art to breathe."
Selena Mattei
