Artists may suffer for their art but now audiences can feel the pain too, thanks to a pop-up tattoo studio at the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam where Rembrandt van Rijn lived, painted and taught.
In one of the more extreme attempts to attract a younger audience post-Covid, the newly renovated museum in Amsterdam is launching a “poor man’s Rembrandt project” for a week in June. Celebrated tattoo artists from the studio Schiffmacher and Veldhoen will be “artists in residence”, offering original tattoos costing from €100 to €250, inspired by the 17th century Dutch master’s etchings, self-portraits and signature.
“It’s about bringing the low-brow world into the high-brow world,” said tattoo artist Henk Schiffmacher, also known as Hanky Panky. “An Amsterdam tattoo has become a form of pilgrimage. At first, people from abroad wanted the three crosses and then gradually they started asking for a little Rembrandt or the Rembrandt House, one of the most famous houses in Amsterdam.”
His studio approached museums with the idea of working together and encountered an enthusiastic reception. “The poor man’s Rembrandt is a title picked up from a very old English tattoo artist,” he added. “You are making a bit of art for people who otherwise would not collect art at all. And the Rembrandt technique involves scratching with a drypoint needle on copper, so now people’s skin will be the etching plate.”
Milou Halbesma, director of the Rembrandt House Museum, said the tattoo project fitted with the museum’s ambition to embrace diverse modern artists. “We are always looking for projects to connect with Amsterdam but also with craftsmanship,” she said. “We see ourselves as the artists’ house. Rembrandt was not just living there and working there, but also teaching his pupils. We want to work in our new studio space with Dutch artists to connect with the public – and we consider Schiffmacher and Veldhoen artists. It’s about the challenge for every museum: to reach the next generation.”
Time slots from 19-25 June are filling up fast. “It’s a huge success already,” said Schiffmacher. “Next on the list is the studio of Francis Bacon!”
Dutch museums have been experimenting with surprising collaborations to broaden audiences and tempt people back to museums, which, says director of the Museumvereniging association, Vera Carasso, suffered particularly as they “were closed for the longest period in Europe” during the pandemic. The Van Gogh Museum had collaborated on clothing with trendy, local streetwear brand The Daily Paper in 2020 and last month the Rijksmuseum launched a selection of Vermeer clothes and surfboards with New Amsterdam Surf Association. “When the values of a brand you are working with are compatible with the values of your museum, it’s not really a problem,” said Carasso.
A separate, blockbuster Amsterdam exhibition of Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum – running until 4 June – has meanwhile proven to be a magnet in attracting visitors from all over the world back to the museum. Tickets to see 27 of the Delft 17th-century master Johannes Vermeer’s 37 extant works sold out within three days of the opening in February. A second release of tickets was “snapped up in just a few days”, a spokesman said, and now the museum has announced a lottery for the chance to buy 2,600 tickets for the final weekend.
Small hiccups such as a dispute about the attribution of Girl with a Flute, protests that Girl with a Pearl Earring was only on loan for eight weeks before returning to The Hague, and packed viewings, have not stopped local and international visitors raving about the exhibition.
Appropriately for the museum that holds one of the Netherlands’ most famous artworks, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, the final tickets for the Vermeer exhibition will be something of a night watch themselves. The museum will open until 2am on Friday 2 June and Saturday 3 June, and the evening showing start times will range from 9.30pm until half past midnight.
