Now through September 16th the Minneapolis Institute of Art is hosting Rembrandt in America and it is fabulous.  Advertised as the largest exhibit of Rembrandt in America, EVER, you will be blown away by both the quality of the Rembrandts gathered from all over the country – from a variety of respected museums and private collectors – and also by the way it is curated. They have put the true Rembrandts next to those that have been de-attributed: those done by others and intentionally sold as Rembrandts, staff artists in his workshop, and those which had appeared to be Rembrandts and have now been changed to reflect the known painters.

By the end of the exhibit you feel like you can tell the difference.  In addition to the show itself, which can be enjoyed by reading the captions, the museum allows you to enter their wireless network on your smartphone  (calling all artists the killer app for owning a smartphone), give you earphones, and which gives you access to the narration (no charge!) and to additional bits you would not have known about.   All for the price of admission.  The portrait to the left is a sketch of the painting that is in the exhibit – oh, there is also a whole room at the end with nothing but sketches – is of his wife, Saskia and taken from ARTstore, to which the library subscribes and is just one of the thousands of Rembrandt images in ARTstore. With this image the museum curators tell you that Rembrandt and Saskia were very much in love, despite the fact that she is in the painting as an apparent afterthought.

They go on to tell you about the terms of her will which will matter by the time you get to the end of the exhibit and see this painting which is absolutely tragic. He has painted his second ‘wife’ whom he also adored but could not marry because of the terms of Saski’s will. 

 I could go on and on and put more and more paintings in but I’ll stop now and tell you to go see it. Before you do, you may want to learn more about Rembrandt from the many resources the library owns. Oxford Art Online is a great place to start, yes even better than Wikipedia. And if you don’t want to read, you might want to watch one of our films about Rembrandt in Films on Demand from the privacy of your own home.

And if you want to see some recent articles on Rembrandt from the collections of the University of St. Thomas click here. This is a Summon search which provides a single search over much of the libraries’ contents.

No matter what you read or watch, make the trip to the MIA to see this exhibit. I want to go over and over again. Oh, make a reservation, they do sell out.