Exhibition program 2022-2023

Crawly Creatures

30 September 2022 to 15 January 2023

This autumn the Rijksmuseum will be teeming with more than a thousand colourful butterflies, hairy spiders and shiny toads. People once associated these crawly creatures with death and the devil, but later on their beauty gripped the imagination of artists and scientists such as Albrecht Dürer, Wenzel Jamnitzer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Maria Sibylla Merian. Crawly Creatures, the exhibition, sheds light on the changing perceptions of these tiny beasties in the arts and sciences.
Museums and private collectors all over the world have loaned the highlights of their collections for this exhibition, including the first drawing with an insect as the main subject by Albrecht Dürer in 1505 from the United States, Medusa painted by Peter Paul Rubens in 1617-18 from the Czech Republic and the finest sottobosco paintings of forest-floor still life by the inventor of the genre Otto Marseus van Schrieck. The exhibition also fast forwards to the present with installations of renowned artists Tomás Saraceno, as well as Rafael Gomezbarros.

The exhibition has been made possible by the Don Quixote Foundation through the Rijksmuseum Fund.

Clara the Rhinoceros

30 September 2022 to 15 January 2023

Clara was strange and new, huge and awe-inspiring – she was utterly unlike any other known animal. From 30 September 2022, the Rijksmuseum presents Clara the Rhinoceros, an exhibition about an animal who travelled far from her native land of India and became the most famous rhinoceros in the world. The exhibition shows how new knowledge changed perceptions of the rhinoceros, and how art played its part in this process.
The 60 objects on display include paintings, drawings, medals, statues, books, clocks and a goblet. Very few of these artworks have been displayed before in the Netherlands, and never before have so many exceptional objects devoted to Clara the rhinoceros being presented together. They range from the first-ever European print depicting a rhinoceros – made in 1515 by Albrecht Dürer, and a life-size, full-length portrait of Clara by Jean-Baptiste Oudry dating from 1749, to the 2016 installation Clara by Rossella Biscotti.

The exhibition has been made possible by a private donor through the Rijksmuseum Fund.

Vermeer

10 February to 4 June 2023

Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt In the spring of 2023, the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands, will dedicate a retrospective exhibition to the 17th-century master Johannes Vermeer for the first time in its history. With loans from all over the world, this promises to be the largest Vermeer exhibition ever. The Rijksmuseum itself has four masterpieces by Vermeer, including the world-famous Milkmaid and The Little Street.
The exhibition is a collaboration between the Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Preparations for the exhibition are currently underway. Both museums will conduct research into Vermeer's artistry, his artistic choices and motivations for his compositions, as well as into the creative process of his paintings.
The Rijksmuseum's exhibition in 2023 will include masterpieces such as The Girl with a Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis, The Hague), The Geographer (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main), Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid (The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) and Woman Holding a Balance (The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC).