Open Havenfront met de Schreierstoren en Nicolaaskerk 1890 - 1946

Curator: Cornelis Vreedenburgh created this pencil drawing sometime between 1890 and 1946. It’s called “Open Havenfront met de Schreierstoren en Nicolaaskerk.” Right now, it resides here in the Rijksmuseum. Editor: My first thought is vulnerability. It feels transient, like a quickly jotted memory on the brink of fading away. The light seems so… fragile. Curator: I get that sense too. The loose lines certainly give it a fleeting quality, capturing a specific moment rather than a lasting monument. Perhaps the precarity of memory resonates strongly with me at the moment. Editor: It also prompts me to consider who is granted the power to record and remember within a community, as well as the perspective from which that story is told. Vreedenburgh seems to present the city with such an intimacy in these fluid, graceful pencil strokes, what exactly were they hoping to remember and make clear about Amsterdam? What position did the people have who he sought to depict? Curator: That’s a crucial lens through which to see this work. Vreedenburgh captures a reality shaped by unequal access and unequal power dynamics. Did they capture their resilience and agency? Editor: Precisely! Also, beyond the cityscapes themselves, these visual records of daily life shape our collective historical imagination. How do we challenge that established imagery? Is it too late to consider alternate versions or to push it beyond a more representative depiction of humanity as a whole? Curator: Food for thought! I wonder about that stain, too. Accidental beauty or some hidden meaning embedded by the artist, intentional or not? We will never know! Editor: Exactly, the intentional and unintentional all come together here, right? Ultimately, that sense of openness that really lingers for me. It becomes more powerful, really, when thinking about historical omissions. Curator: You’ve opened my eyes to seeing the quiet power embedded in those perceived silences. Editor: And you have reminded me of the subtle ways beauty can exist in those ephemeral moments.