Summer Institute for Netherlandish Art

The Summer Institute for Netherlandish Art is a biennial professional development program for emerging specialists in Dutch and Flemish art co-organized by the Rijksmuseum; RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History; Center for Netherlandish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Harvard Art Museums. The Summer Institute prepares participants to foreground the study of objects in their research practice. The program positions object-based study as a methodology while probing issues of materiality and condition, and introduces participants to the range of means to examine both. Through related objects in the collections of the organizing institutions, participants study a range of media including paintings, decorative arts, prints, and drawings.

Participants explore how museums and research institutions operate as public-serving platforms for art, ideas, scholarship, and expertise in a time of intensified collaboration and rethinking of scholarly practice. They learn how to understand today’s audiences and discover opportunities for connecting them with scholarship. Participants learn about best practices and future trajectories in public-facing scholarship including exhibitions and interpretation.

The Summer Institute takes place every two years, with the next program scheduled for 2025. Check back in fall 2024 for information about the call for applications. For updates, sign up for the CNA Newsletter by selecting “Center for Netherlandish Art” as one of your e-mail preferences.

Background

Since 1993, the Rijksmuseum and RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History have organized a biennial summer program. Both institutions’ extensive holdings—of art and archives, respectively—have formed the basis of the course, with the goal of offering the next generation of art historians the opportunity to enrich and deepen their knowledge of 17th-century Netherlandish art.

In 2017, thanks to a transformative gift from Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, the Center for Netherlandish Art was founded at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. That same year Harvard Art Museums received a major gift of 16th- to 18th-century Dutch and Flemish drawings from the esteemed collection of Maida and George S. Abrams.

With Boston as a new hub for Dutch and Flemish Art in the United States, the existing Rijksmuseum and RKD summer program has brought the CNA and Harvard Art Museums on board as partners, expanding its international outlook by establishing a transatlantic collaboration.

Please e-mail cna@mfa.org with questions.