It’s 1956. A dilapidated one-room outbuilding, like you might find on any tobacco farm, stands beside the road in rural North Carolina. The windows are boarded up, the porch is caving in, mud from a chilly rain has splashed up on the cedar siding, and the roof’s been patched over the years. It hasn’t been torn down—these things are best left to the elements. (Who knows, we may need it again someday?!) But now it’s sandwiched between two billboards, tall, crisp, and new, to catch the eyes of passersby bumping down the rural route toward Raleigh. You don’t need to know about art to know the Old Master “Rembrandt” announced in boldly stylized signature script. You just need to know when and where (these details in a playful off-center layout, no less!).
“The North Carolina Museum of Art” at the top, in a modern sans-serif? Now, that’s new. The new Museum just opened in April of 1956 in downtown Raleigh, and this is its first exhibition—and what a way to start! Back in ’47 the state legislature appropriated $1 million to purchase art for the people of North Carolina (an amazing, audacious initiative), and in the years after lured Dr. William Valentiner—former director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Los Angeles County Museum, and J. Paul Getty Museum, and the world’s preeminent Rembrandt scholar—out of retirement to buy paintings and begin a museum. In the fall of 1956, Valentiner draws upon his decades of experience (and calls in years of favors) to bring Rembrandts from across the globe to North Carolina’s quiet capital town. And the people of North Carolina embrace the exhibition.
What I see in this old photo is still true today—and it’s why I love North Carolina. Around here culture means an afternoon with the world’s finest paintings … followed by a raucous evening of college basketball; new gourmet restaurants alongside North Carolina barbecue mainstays; letterpress designers working around the corner from cutting-edge Web development firms. Here you get your music from the symphony and the old general store in Bynum. Pick the right weekend, and you can enjoy a cappuccino from locally roasted beans, with a deep-fried Snickers on the side, while enjoying a mesmerizing video projection by a contemporary artist. (And that Snickers will still be warm.) Old, new, high, low, rural, urban, digital, analogue … we not only embrace them, we love to see them collide and mix and make something new. I can’t wait to see what we make now, having seen Rembrandt, our Old Master, in a new way.
Man in Jiffy-Pop Hat? Dude with ‘Tude? Grade-school wit is so contagious, it’s hard to resist inventing mock titles for such a puerile painting.
Let me be frank. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it happen more than once. Someone moved to tears by a painting? Yeah, right! But it’s true. Lucretia, depicting a bleeding, heartbroken, dying figure, is obviously a tearjerker. We’re seeing it in the galleries quite frequently. One visitor’s sobs prompted a guard to ask if she needed assistance; another’s pacing in front of the painting was sad and intense; a pair of women in conversation on a nearby bench, tearful, emotional. I’m a guy. Honestly, I don’t get it. However, I do get that the ability to pull powerful emotions with strokes of a paintbrush is real genius.
Whenever I work at the Information Desk on the day a “What’s in the Box” session is held, I so enjoy seeing the children leaving with their finished products, all smiles and pride. Now I have had the grown-up version of that experience in the Senior Sampler class! I came away from the first class, “Face to Face,” a study of portraiture, all smiles and even a little proud.
With the opening of Rembrandt in America, our visitors are able to see more authentic paintings by this master presented together than in any other show to date in the U.S. They can enjoy these great works of art, learn about the Rembrandt Research Project, and have a glimpse into the intriguing field of conservation.
It’s that time of year again, dear readers! With the change of the seasons comes a new edition of our billboards project, Park Pictures. We’ve been promoting 
The eyes, oh those incredible, penetrating eyes in Self-Portrait, 1659 tell the tale not simply of the artist but of the man. His expression draws you in, swiftly rolling back the centuries. I stood before the portrait and wondered how it was possible that coarse paint applied to stiff canvas more than 350 years ago could stir emotion in me. A sense of connection (with a touch of melancholy) swelled within as I looked at the portrait of Rembrandt van Rijn, painted in his later years when financial woes and personal tragedies had deeply scarred his life.
Rembrandt lived and worked during the Golden Age of Dutch history. The city of Amsterdam dominated world trade and grew wealthy in the process. Science flourished, and so did the arts. This Sunday at the Museum, the Magnolia Baroque Ensemble, an accomplished group from Winston-Salem, will perform the music of Rembrandt’s Amsterdam on period instruments, including harpsichord, viola de gamba, and recorder.
