The famous choreographer Rudi van Dantzig (Amsterdam, 1933) has died. At the age of sixteen he started dancing with Ballet Recital, a group formed by the Russian Jew Sonia Gaskell. He produced his first choreography for the Dutch Nationale Ballet in 1955, later becoming their house choreographer. In 1965 he became one of the national ballet’s three artistic directors, with Hans van Manen and Toer van Schayk, each of whom had his own style.

In all Van Dantzig created more than fifty ballets that are still part of the world repertoire. He choreographed three for Rudolf Nureyev, including Monument for a dead boy (1965), portraying a boy who wants to free himself from the stifling, heterosexual norms and values of his environment.

Van Dantzig’s choreographies are often of a narrative and socially critical nature.

His most well-known choreographies also include Vier Letzte Lieder and his versions of the classical ballets Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake.

In 1986 he wrote the novel For a Lost Soldier, which has also been made into a film. His book is about his discovery of homosexuality with an American soldier at the end of the Second World War.

Dieter Roelstraete (°1972), who has been at the M HKA - the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp - since 2003, is to become senior curator in Chicago as of February 2012. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is one of the more important museums in the US. It recently organised the American retrospective of the Flemish painter Luc Tuymans.

Roelstraete will be the Manilow Senior Curator at MCA Chicago. He succeeds the Italian, Francesco Bonami.

At M HKA Roelstraete has curated the exhibitions Emotion Pictures; Intertidal, a special exhibition of contemporary art from Vancouver; Liam Gillick and Lawrence Weiner - A Syntax of Dependency and the collective projects Academy: Learning from Art, The Projection Project and All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.

At the moment, too, there is an exhibition at the M HKA organised by him: A Rua (The Street), a thematic cross-section of the historically important contemporary art scene in Rio de Janeiro.

His most recent exhibition at M HKA will open in February 2012, the first large-scale retrospective of one of Belgium’s most famous artists, the cineaste Chantal Akerman. Roelstraete will maintain his links with the M HKA from a distance.

The M HKA will take on a new curator in 2012.

The rural Dutch landscapes of artist Willem Maris (1844-1910) will be the focus of a solo exhibition at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (The Hague) from 21 January to 9 April 2012. Featuring the fresh, vivid palette which earned Maris the nickname of the ‘Hague School Impressionist’.

Willem was the third in a family of five children. His two brothers Jacob and Matthijs Maris preceded him as painters.  He remained true to the subjects he had chosen in his youth: meadow landscapes with willows and ditches, cows grazing in boggy grassland, a spray of sunbeams, ducks splashing around at the edge of a pond. His paintings and watercolors are best known for his emphasis on light.

Maris' often cited motto was: "I don't paint cows, but rather effects of light." His early work in particular often contained a cool, cloudy atmosphere. Someone wrote: " In those days, the young painter had a pronounced preference for shrouds of mist, which is quite peculiar. On several occasions he angrily broke off his study trips as soon as the sun and wind had chased away the early morning mist."

The exhibition is accompanied by photographs of country scenes by Dutch photographer Han Singels (b.1942). Since 2000 Singels has been touring the agricultural areas around Amsterdam on his moped, tracking down remnants of the romantic Dutch landscape of yesteryear.

Illustrations: Willem Maris, The Calves, c. 1863, The Mesdag Collection / Han Singels, Germense Waard, 2006, courtesy Van Zoetendaal. 

Five hundred years ago Gerard Kremer was born in Rupelmonde, near Antwerp. The son of a poor shoemaker, whose humanist ambitions later led him to take the Latin name Mercator, grew up to become one of the greatest scientists of the Low Countries.

This year, Mercator year, there are all sorts of commemorations and initiatives in the pipeline in the area where he was born: http://www.mercator2012.be/. Read te Low Countries Yearbook  article about Mercator here.

Mercator was the first to map the whole world in one book, which he baptised ‘atlas’. Only a few complete copies of that monumental masterpiece, the Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura, which was still unfinished when he died, have been preserved.

From Leuven to Duisburg
Thanks to a rich uncle, Mercator was able to get the best teaching, with the humanist playwright Marcropedius in’s Hertogenbosch, the Frisian geographer Gemma Frisius and at the workshop of the talented goldsmith, engraver and globe builder, Amyricius, in Leuven.

After his studies and apprenticeship Mercator established himself as an independent instrument builder and took his first steps as a geographer and globe builder for important clients like Charles V.

A follower of Luther, Mercator was imprisoned in the Graventoren, or Count’s Tower,  in Rupelmonde at the peak of the religious vicissitudes in the 16th century. Eventually he moved with his family to Duisburg in Germany. There he managed to publish his most important work, such as his first pioneering map of Europe, which for the first time included findings that corrected the ancient theories of Ptolomaeus.

The Mercator projection
He refined his knowledge as a cartographer and developed the revolutionary Mercator projection, which is important for shipping even today. It is still impossible to project the spherical surface on a flat surface without distortions appearing. Mercator’s projection, based on his knowledge of the workings of the compass, deliberately deals with these distortions, so that they become extremely user-friendly for shipping navigation.

With his beautifully coloured, precise and clear maps Mercator is rightly considered to be the inventor of the modern world view which, with the discoveries in the New World and with the new scientific knowledge that was able to be spread through printed books, extended the limits of human knowledge and abilities.

From 21 January to 22 April 2012 the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam is exhibiting more than a hundred drawings by seventeenth-century Netherlandish artists from the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. They include exceptional sheets by Rembrandt as well as masterpieces by many of his predecessors and contemporaries. It will be the first time that most of the drawings return to the city — and in some cases to the very house — where they were made. 

Rembrandt

Some of the drawings in the exhibition have a special relationship to Rembrandt’s graphic oeuvre. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was an etcher as well as a painter and draughtsman. Remarkably few of his drawn preliminary studies have survived, but the Hamburger Kunsthalle has two of them: the preparatory drawings for the print of St Jerome Reading in a Landscape and Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Both prints are in the Rembrandt House Museum’s collection and they will be shown in the exhibition 

Drawing in Rembrandt’s Day

The exhibition is in two parts: sheets by Rembrandt and his school and a wide-ranging selection of drawings by artists from Rembrandt’s time. Landscapes, tree portraits, genre scenes, figure studies, portraits, marines and Amsterdam cityscapes will present visitors with a representative overview of seventeenth-century drawing in the Northern Netherlands. Perhaps the most striking aspects are the outstanding quality of the sheets and the huge diversity of subjects, drawing styles and techniques. 

Picture: Rembrandt, St Jerome Reading in a Landscape, c. 1649, pen and brush in brown ink with white corrections . 

Dutch-Polish relations go back as far as the late Middle Ages. It is a history full of dramatic events, unexpected twists and serious rifts.  

Dutch and Polish scholars (and one Flemish) wrote a book that focuses primarily on the relations between the Netherlands and Poland in the 20^th century, an episode generally neglected in historiography compared to the earlier period. The book’s title: Poland and the Netherlands: a Case Study of European Relations (full credits below). 

Today Poland and the Netherlands have developed full political, economic and cultural ties. Both countries enjoy as sovereign states equal membership of the EU and NATO. It took a long way to come so far. Because of political circumstances, largely driven by developments outside the two countries’ control, it was not an easy way to go. International politics, especially the Second World War (two governments  in exile in London; Polish soldiers helping to liberate the Netherlands), the succeeding Cold War and the collapse of the Berlin Wall influenced bilateral contacts deeply. It makes the story of modern Dutch-Polish relations the more fascinating. 

The plan to publish this book was first announced at the 19^th Utrecht Conference in May 2009. Both the Dutch and Polish Ministers of Foreign Affairs reflected on the 10^th anniversary of this conference as a platform for the developments of bilateral relations. It had been 90 years since Poland and the Netherlands had embarked on modern diplomatic relations.   

Poland and the Netherlands: a case study of European relations, Edited by Duco Hellema, Ryszard Zelichowski, Bert van der Zwan, Republic of Letters Publishing BV, Dordrecht, 2011. International Studies Library 29. ISBN: 9789089790750.

The jury for the Vondel Translation Prize 2011 has awarded the prize to Paul Vincent for My Little War, his English translation of Louis Paul Boon’s Mijn kleine oorlog. Vincent receives a prize of € 5000.

My Little War was published in the United States in 2010 by Dalkey Archive Press, and is the first English translation of Louis Paul Boon’s 1947 novel. The translation was financially supported by the Flemish Literature Fund.

The Board of the Yearbook The Low Countries. Arts and Society in Flanders and the Netherlands is particularly proud with this prestigious prize for one of its own translators. Here is a list of Paul Vincent’s translations.

The Vondel Translation Prize is a biennial award for the best book translation into British or American English of a Dutch-language work of literature or cultural history. It was established by the Society of Authors and is funded by the Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Flemish Literature Fund.

The runner-up to Paul Vincent is David Colmer for The Portrait, his translation of Specht en zoon by Willem Jan Otten. The other titles on the shortlist were: Marjolijn Februari - The Book Club (Paul Vincent); Leon de Winter - God’s Gym (Jeannette Ringold); Anna Enquist - Counterpoint (Jeannette Ringold); Dimitri Verhulst, Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill (David Colmer); Douwe Draaisma, Disturbances of the Mind (Barbara Fasting); and Margriet de Moor, The Storm (Carol Brown Janeway).

Pieter Steinz, currently editor-in-chief of the weekly books section of NRC Handelsblad, has been. appointed director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature as of 1 March 2012. The Foundation supports writers and translators and promotes Dutch literature abroad.

Steinz succeeds Henk Pröpper, who recently left to become director at De Bezige Bij, major Dutch publishing house.

Jan Hoekema: “As chairman of the board of the Dutch Foundation for Literature I am enormously pleased by the arrival of Pieter Steinz. Like his predecessor Henk Pröpper, he is a man of letters who gives both a face and a voice to Dutch literature. He is also a capable manager, which is something we will sorely need in these financially difficult times. Our healthy, new Foundation for Literature now has a powerful director and is ready to face the future.”

Pieter Steinz (b. 1963) studied History as well as English Language and Literature at the University of Amsterdam and at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, USA.  

He has published ten books on literature, some encyclopaedic, others contemplative. They include, this year, Macbeth heeft echt geleefd. Een reis door Europa in de voetsporen van 16 literaire helden (Macbeth was a Real Person. A journey through Europe in the footsteps of 16 literary heroes) and in 2003 a guide to world literature called Lezen & cetera, which is also the title of a monthly literary talk show he has hosted since 2004 in Theater Donner in Rotterdam.

Tiziano Perez, head of Promotion and Information, will serve as interim director until 1 March 2012.

In 2011 the Antwerp City Museums have been much in the news. The MAS | Museum aan de Stroom opened its doors on 17 May, and the number of visitors has exceeded all expectations. The Middelheim Museum welcomed the individualistic Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, and the Rubens House focused attention on a lesser known side of the great artist by mounting the exhibition Palazzo Rubens. The Master as Architect.

The Museum Mayer van den Bergh presented, in its exhibition The Burcht, the story of the lost heart of Antwerp, the historical area around the Steen. The Plantin-Moretus/Printroom displayed work by the contemporary artists Anne-mie Van Kerckhoven and Peter De Koninck, and drew upon its own unique collection of prints for several small but superb presentations.  

In 2012 the Middelheim Museum will undergo a complete makeover. The MAS will organise a number of activities to look back on its first year, and the Red Star Line Museum (picture) will celebrate its pre-opening year.  The Museum Plantin-Moretus/Printroom will highlight its collection of old and new masters, as well as the great Mercator.

The Museum Mayer van den Bergh and the House of Literature will mount exhibitions of ‘hidden’ work by two other masters of Belgian origin: painter Pieter Bruegel and writer Louis Paul Boon.