Happy Friday, listeners! It’s Jennifer, ArtCurious host, back at you this week with our short-form Friday roundup of my favorite art history updates and interesting news tidbits. This is ArtCurious News this Week, and this gets you up to date on some of the latest goings-on in the realm of art history. Today is Friday, November 4, 2022.

This week’s stories:

The Guardian: Museums spar over authenticity of painting ahead of major Vermeer show

The Guardian: Protesters who targeted Girl with a Pearl Earring jailed by Dutch court

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Episode Transcript

Hi there, everyone. It’s Jennifer, ArtCurious host, in your ear buds today with our short-form Friday roundup of my favorite art history updates and interesting news tidbits. This is ArtCurious News this Week, and this gets you up to date on some of the latest goings-on in the realm of art history.

Today is Friday, November 4, 2022. And today’s news brief is a very Vermeer-centric one. Last week I reported that the largest exhibition of works by Johannes Vermeer—the largest ever—is going to be on view next year at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Out of about 35 known works of art that Vermeer completed during his lifetime, the Rijksmuseum will be showing at least 28—with the possibility of more loans and additions being announced as we get closer and closer to the show’s opening date, though we can’t know for sure. All that is well and good—but just this week, it was announced that there’s a spot of controversy therein. Earlier this year, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., announced that one of their works of art—a painting titled Girl with a Flute was being downgraded from a work by Vermeer, to being the work of someone, quote, “with a profound understanding of Vermeer’s techniques.” Unquote, as reported by ArtNews. Now, let me say that that is big news in and of itself, even if it’s not positive news, necessarily, for the National Gallery. But this isn’t altogether uncommon. Art attribution, as I’ve written about both in my book and have shared on the podcast, is tricky, tricky business, an act that requires a lot of research, a lot of work, but also a lot of best guesses.  But what’s fascinating about the news this week is that the Rijksmuseum is borrowing Girl with a Flute from the National Gallery for their huge Vermeer exhibition… and they will be exhibiting the work as a Vermeer, not or “Pupil of Vermeer,” or “Follower of Vermeer,” or “Studio of Vermeer,” as the National Gallery currently showcases this work. This isn’t usually the standard, I’d say, being a museum person myself. Typically, you would defer to the lending institution’s identification of the work of art under their purview, so this is fascinating to me. Rijksmuseum director and unofficial Man with the Best Name, Taco Dibbits, released a statement to The Guardian newspaper, saying, quote, “Attribution is not a hard science but we feel that Vermeer is such an innovative artist who took so many directions in his art that we feel that for us, as yet, the painting is by Vermeer.” Unquote. Woof. I agree with Dibbits on the first part about attribution not being a hard science, but man, that’s a ballsy move, and one that proves that the art world has just as much infighting and disagreement than anything else. And look—one of the great things- and I mean that sincerely—about art history and historians is that it isn’t all cut and dry. There’s room for renegotiation, reconsideration. There’s room for news ideas and new stories, even regarding objects that are hundreds or thousands of years old. But it’s interesting, from my outside perspective here, to know that a crackerjack group of interdisciplinary experts at the National Gallery could attest to their beliefs that their work of art is not a Vermeer… and then have another museum dismiss this statement, one that was probably years in the making. Interesting, right? Well, if I can get over to Amsterdam this spring and see Girl with a Flute with my own eyes and in the context of all the other quote-unquote “real” Vermeers, that’ll be an adventure to be sure.

For our next story, I’m keeping on trend and on theme. So, literally only a couple of hours after I recorded and edited last week’s episode of ArtCurious News This Week, I learned that a pair of climate protestors from the organization Just Stop Oil struck again—and this time, they hit none other than Vermeer’s iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring at the Mauritshuis museum in the Hague, Netherlands. One of the men attempted to glue his balding or shaved head to the glazing—or glass—covering the painting, while a second man glued his own hand to the wall and then threw soup over his bald-headed pal—you know, because tomato soup was thrown at the Van Gogh Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London a few weeks prior. Check out my YouTube channel for my short video—less than 1 minute long—about what I think this is going to do to the art world and to your museum experience. Anyway. All this is a long prologue to say that it was announced this week that those protestors have been sentenced to two months in prison, with one of those months suspended, according to a Dutch court. Of course this has led to vitriol on both sides of the artwork and climate issue, with Just Stop Oil announcing after the verdict, quote, “Isn’t it ironic that climate activists who nonviolently oppose the mass slaughter of life on Earth are being condemned?” Unquote. For their part, the prosecution noted, quote, “An artwork hanging there for all of us to enjoy has been smeared by defendants who felt their message took precedence over everything else.” Unquote.  The Guardian reports that the prosecutors asked for a longer sentence of four months with two of those suspended, but that the judge denied this because she, quote, “did not want her sentence to discourage other people from demonstrating.” No matter what your opinion is on this, I feel like no one really wins. Protestors win and art and museums lose. Or museums and art wins, and the earth dies. I can’t quite get a handle on all of this, I’m going to be honest. But I will keep watching and learning and trying to figure it all out. And that’s all I can really do, from my tiny perch over here, as an art historian.

Speaking of getting honest with you, I’ve got one more story to share with you today—and it’s not news per se, as in you’re not going to see it scrolling around on Twitter or New York Times, but it is news pertaining to you, if you’re listening today. So please support me and the show by listening to a couple of ads, and we’ll be right back. Thanks for listening!

Welcome back to ArtCurious, and our News this Week. For our last story today, as I mentioned before the break, I’m going real on you. Running this podcast has been great. Doing this show has been a literal life-changer for me, as I left my full-time, stable museum job a year ago to do this for you full time, which means me cobbling together goodies for you not only through this audio format, but also a re-invigorated YouTube channel, new writing projects, travel, events and more. It’s a lot. It was my choice, of course, but it’s a lot. And in the nearly 7—YES, 7!—years since I began this show in 2016, the podcast game has changed a huge, huge amount. Things hit really big during the pandemic when people were looking for things to do, and that was amazing. But now we’re (sort of?) out of the pandemic, and things have settled. To make things more interesting, celebrity podcasts and those backed by big, traditional media outlets really exploded during the pandemic, too. What does all this mean? It means that my timing wasn’t the best. It’s getting harder for me to do this, to stay nimble, for me to bring this to you for such little return. I LOVE ArtCurious. I LOVE IT, and it’s been my life and livelihood. But straight up. ArtCurious WILL be ending after its current season unless I can get your financial support. My crisis, totally unintentionally and coincidentally, just happens to line up with the week that I launched my Patreon account, which allows you to donate as little as $4 a month to help keep us going. For that amount, you’ll get an AD-FREE feed of our show, and more benefits will be  added as soon as I can figure it all out.  So we’re at that point, y’all. If ArtCurious means anything to you-- anything-- please give today. A tax-free donation via our friends at VAE Raleigh is always super-duper appreciated, but if you want a little something in return, please consider Patreon. And if you can't give, let me know—just to verify that you’re out there, listening, and that this ask isn’t falling on deaf ears, the bane of a podcaster’s existence. And please watch my YouTube channel and download and listen to our show, all for free-- free ways that you can (hopefully) keep us going.

Alright, friends. Thanks for listening to ArtCurious News this Week, and thanks for listening to my humbling and humble ask.   As always, if you liked this episode, please let me know. You can hit me up on Facebook or Instagram (I’m quicker to respond on Insta, FYI) or email me via the contact form on my website, artcuriouspodcast.com. There are a LOT of ways to connect with me and the show right now—you can travel with me on an upcoming trip to Italy in May 2023, you can watch my fun and wide-ranging YouTube channel, you can take my audio course, “Breaking Barriers: Women Artists of Renaissance Europe,” and you can help us for free by downloading to our episodes. And please tell your friends. I’ll be back in your feeds twice next week—on Monday with a new feature from “Breaking Barriers,” and on Friday with another segment of ArtCurious News This Week. Until then, my immense thanks for listening, and stay curious.