1 March 2017
Museum’s top pieces travel to Japan
Bruegel’s ‘The Tower of Babel’ and Bosch’s ‘The Pedlar’ and ‘St Christopher’ – among the highlights of the museum’s collection – recently traveled to Japan along with ninety other works. These masterpieces, which are only lent in exceptional cases, are on their way to Collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen: Bruegel’s ‘The Tower of Babel’ and Great 16th-Century Masters, an exhibition in Tokyo and Osaka organized in association with Japanese media giant The Asahi Shimbun.
This is the first time Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has shown its collection of sixteenth-century masters on this scale in another country. The first venue is the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum opened on 18 April 2017. Subsequently the exhibition travels to the National Museum of Art, Osaka and will be on view from 11 July until 15 October 2017. In total, 39 paintings, 43 prints and 10 wooden statues are traveled to Japan, a country fascinated with architecture and culture.
International focus
In 2015, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has begun to create international exhibitions inspired by the collection for foreign museums under the name ‘BVB Collections’. With ‘BVB Collections’ the museum aims to bring the museum, its collection, and the city of Rotterdam to a worldwide audience.
Video
Filmmakers of the museum followed ‘The Tower of Babel’ to Japan and captured in this video how it was received in Japan.
More information can be found on babel2017.jp.
Video: 'The Tower of Babel' travels to Japan