Thousands of Women and a Few Buddhas
Today, I began my museum research in earnest. I returned first to the Amsterdam Museum, which has the mission of recording the city's history in all its diversity. The "city lab" for children, which was in its testing stage last year, is now open. It offers opportunities to think about how the city's geography functions, and young people can identify problems and try to find solutions to them. Not surprisingly, Lego blocks were in abundance! I like the notion that the exhibit engages children in thinking about the place where they live and empowers them to consider ways of resolving problems.
Most of my time, however, was spent in a special exhibition based on a book documenting the stories of 1000 Dutch women of the twentieth century (with a briefer coda including 80 twenty-first century women, which was mostly celebratory and short on objects). The obvious choices, such as Anne Frank, were in evidence, but also less well-known females, including Maria Montessori, who made the Netherlands her home for many years. When I was a child in Montessori school in Rome, I learned her method of diagramming sentences using stickers, so I was excited to see this picture of her efforts to diagram the opening of Dante's Divine Comedy!
The next two images relate to sisters who were imprisoned in Ravensbruck and created samplers documenting their existence. On the whole, the exhibit included a wide variety of women, though most were white, straight, and cisgender.
After that, I saw an exhibition on the life of Buddha at Nieuwe Kerk. I am always ambivalent about the exhibits in this setting, and this one was no exception. First, it was jarring to see Buddhist statues in such an obviously Christian setting.
Second, there were very few of the exquisite Buddhas on display, and they were grouped according to periods in Buddha's life, but without discussion of their diverse origins and eras. As a result, the richness and diversity of Buddhism across Asia was completely flattened. The show was very text heavy. I did enjoy the wide range of contemporary works inspired by Buddhist teaching, though.
Tomorrow, perhaps I shall visit the Tropenmuseum's Cool Japan exhibit to continue my Asian theme.
Most of my time, however, was spent in a special exhibition based on a book documenting the stories of 1000 Dutch women of the twentieth century (with a briefer coda including 80 twenty-first century women, which was mostly celebratory and short on objects). The obvious choices, such as Anne Frank, were in evidence, but also less well-known females, including Maria Montessori, who made the Netherlands her home for many years. When I was a child in Montessori school in Rome, I learned her method of diagramming sentences using stickers, so I was excited to see this picture of her efforts to diagram the opening of Dante's Divine Comedy!
The next two images relate to sisters who were imprisoned in Ravensbruck and created samplers documenting their existence. On the whole, the exhibit included a wide variety of women, though most were white, straight, and cisgender.
After that, I saw an exhibition on the life of Buddha at Nieuwe Kerk. I am always ambivalent about the exhibits in this setting, and this one was no exception. First, it was jarring to see Buddhist statues in such an obviously Christian setting.
Tomorrow, perhaps I shall visit the Tropenmuseum's Cool Japan exhibit to continue my Asian theme.
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