The Rijksmuseum organizes exhibitions both large and small, national and international at the Philips Wing.

High Society

8 March to 3 June 2018

For centuries, powerful princes, eccentric aristocrats and fabulously wealthy citizens, looking their most beautiful in full regalia, had themselves painted by the world’s best artists. Preferably life-size, standing and ‘from head to toe’. In spring 2018, the Rijksmuseum will present High Society: thirty-five life-size portraits by the great masters in art history: from Cranach to Velázquez and from Rembrandt to Manet. Paintings are on loan from, among others, the Louvre (Paris), Musée d’Orsay (Paris), Tate (London) and Uffizi (Florence).

Rembrandts Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit will be the shining centerpieces of the exhibition. These newly acquired spectacular wedding portraits of Rembrandt will be presented here for the first time after restoration.

The restoration of Rembrandt’s Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit has been made possible by Irma Theodora Fonds/Rijksmuseum Fonds and the Cevat Fonds/Rijksmuseum Fonds..

The High Society exhibition is being made possible in part with the support of the Blockbusterfonds, ING and FedEx.

8 March to 3 June 2018

Ed van der Elsken (b. 1925 d. 1990) is indisputably the best Dutch photographer of mid-20th century. He was a master storyteller, using his richly layered and atmospheric photographs to capture everything from his bohemian life as an artist in Amsterdam and Paris to the everyday lives of Yakuza gang members in Osaka. A small selection of original, rare prints will be on show at a small dazzling exhibition running from 8 March. The guest curator for this exhibition is the film director and avid collector Jan de Bont, who, together with his wife Trish Reeves de Bont, donated fourteen prints to the Rijksmuseum in 2017. In the exhibition, he sheds new light on the photographs and relates from his own experience how the works of Van der Elsken have inspired him.

29 June to 16 September 2018

Fantasy sea creatures, creepy monsters and freakish body shapes
reminiscent of dripping candle wax. That’s the auricular style: the most important and most sensational contribution that the Netherlands has made to the development of interior art in Europe. Jugs, scales, furniture and picture frames with these seemingly just-solidified shapes, adorned the chicest interiors of the 17th-century elite. The Dutch artists of this style enjoyed unprecedented status in their time and established the trend in England, Germany and France. They were mutual friends and could compete with Rembrandt, who even portrayed the auricular style in his paintings. The Rijksmuseum highlights this ‘Dutch Design’ in more than one hundred works of art from the Golden Age.

12 October 2018 to 20 January 2019

In 2018, it will be 450 years since the Eighty Years’ War began. Everyone has heard of these years of rebellion by the Netherlands under the leadership of William of Orange against the Spanish King Philip II. What is the significance of that war, and why is this conflict important to the Netherlands? In the Eighty Years’ War exhibition, the Rijksmuseum, with special works of art and exciting objects, shows how violence, rebellion and civil war, terror and oppression, religious persecutions and refugees could lead to the emergence of the present Netherlands and Belgium without that ever being the intention.