In the fall of 2004 Sasha, Steven and I went to the Toneelschuur in Haarlem and saw the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring.

A few days later, while I was waiting for my visa to be processed, we saw the painting in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. It’s a gorgeous little painting, and through the movie it became one of Vermeer’s best-known works.

Yesterday the news came out that Girl with the Pearl Earring will be shown in three museums in the United States next year, while the Mauritshuis is being renovated. Very exciting news.

Yesterday we made a roadtrip to the capitol of Connecticut, Hartford. We visited the Wadsforth Atheneum to see an exhibition on ‘reunited paintings’.

The weather was great and it was fun to drive through New York state and Connecticut. We had lunch in Mount Kisco, a friendly town and on our way back we had dinner there as well.

The exibition was quite nice: 10 pairs of paintings that were painted together, but over the years were sold separately to different collectors and museums and were now reunited.

In the regular collection of the museum there were a number of Dutch paintings including a work by Jacob Ruisdael, “View on Bloemendaal”.

Monday morning Jaap, Mieke and I visited Amsterdam. We left Middenmeer at 10.00 am and in the morning we visited The Complete Rembrandt, a very original exhibition consisting of reproductions of all known paintings by Rembrandt.

So, no original paintings in this event in the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, only life size digital copies made from the archives of the Rembrandt Foundation, an organization that researches works by Rembrandt to assess authenticity for museums.

It was extremely interesting to see all these reproductions next to each other. For example, there was a chronological list of 7 self portraits of Rembrandt, from early age until his last known self portrait. It would be absolutely impossible to get these works, which are in collections all over the world, together for an exhibition. This is the great added value of this exhibition: to see these works together and next to each other.

Two reproductions of works that were stolen from a museum in Boston in 1990 were also on display. The Foundation had high resolution photographs made before the theft.

I just discovered through a review in the WSJ that the National Gallery has again a great exhibition of a Dutch 17th century artist, this time about Judith Leyster.

I don’t know Judith Leyster’s work, but she worked with Frans Hals and was one of the two only women accepted to the Guild of St. Luke in 17th century Haarlem.

The exhibition will run through November 29 and Sasha and will definitely go check it out, probably in September. According to the WSJ: “She deserves attention”.

I’m also very excited about “The Complete Rembrandt, Life Size”, an show with life-size reprints of all known works by Rembrandt. It’s on display in Amsterdam, which I’ll visit in about two weeks.

This weekend we made a wonderful trip to Washington DC. On Saturday we arrived in time for lunch at The Boulevard Woodgrill in Arlington, the area where we lived for two years. Lunch there was great, just as we remembered it, and it was a lot of fun to be back in the Courthouse area.

We spent time in Georgetown and in the evening we went out around Dupont Circle, with an excellent late night dinner at Pizza Paradiso. A very small, very friendly place with very good pizza.

Sunday morning we visited “Pride Of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age” in the National Gallery of Art. This exhibition is a corporation between The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in the Netherlands and the National Gallery, and combines works from those museums with many other paintings from all over the world. I first read about it in December when it was showing in the Netherlands.

We spent a long time in the gallery; it was truly wonderful. A highlight of the exhibition for us was “View of Hoorn”, by the relatively obscure painter Abraham de Verwer. Together with the two Albert Cuyp paintings this work was a beautiful showcase of ‘Dutch light’.

I’m in the Met; it’s great.

I doubt that I’ll have time for the Frick collection, there is so much to see here.

Yesterday when we were in the National Gallery of Art, I was wondering where the “View of Haarlem” was that I saw there two years ago.

It turns out that there is a very exiting exhibition now in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, “Pride of place: Dutch cityscapes of the Golden Age”. The best news is that the exhibition will be on display in the National Gallery from February 2009. The Jan Lieven exhibition by the way, will move on to the Milwaukee Art Museum, and later in 2009 to the Netherlands.

I’m really looking forward to see the Dutch Cityscapes exhibition. It will even include the famous “View of Delft” by Vermeer, that Sasha and I saw when we visited the Mauritshuis in The Hague four years ago.

We’re in the National Gallery in DC, where there is a special exhibition on Jan Lievens.

Today we’re in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Ilana.

There is wonderful collection of Dutch art here, including Ruisdael and Hobbema.

Sunday we visited the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The Mauritshuis is a museum with a large collection of old paintings, mainly from Dutch artists.

We were inspired by the movie we saw a few days ago: the painting “Girl with a pearl earring” is in the Mauritshuis. We had a very nice afternoon. There were some paintings by Frans Hals and Jacob van Ruisdael. I saw a picture of “View of Haarlem with bleaching grounds” in a book a few weeks ago, and I really enjoyed seeing it now in real.

I am now waiting for papers to be processed. It will be another four weeks before I know more.