Boston’s art scene is getting a Dutch treat with a twist: a flurry of donated 17th-century masterpieces that experts say will change the city’s museum landscape for decades to come. First, collectors gifted the Museum of Fine Arts with 113 leading Golden Age masterpieces — including a prized Rembrandt portrait and works by Rubens and Brueghel — and established a new centre dedicated to the study of Dutch and Flemish art. Now, the Harvard Art Museums have been bequeathed 330 drawings dating to the 1600s. Boston-area collectors Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie last month donated works by 76 artists to the Museum of Fine Arts. Harvard Art Museums director Martha Tedeschi called the most recent gift “truly transformative,” saying it will help make Boston “a major destination for the study and presentation of Dutch, Flemish and Netherlandish art.”Together, the donations mean Boston now boasts one of the largest U.S. collections of Golden Age art.

Source: National Post November 12, 2017 11:37 UTC