Art

Three hundred drones lit up the Amsterdam sky above the IJ with a light show on Saturday night. The drones flew in different formations, inspired by the flight patterns of starlings, AT5 reports.

The show premiered in Miami last year. A special exception was made to have the show in Amsterdam on Saturday, because drones are actually forbidden in the airspace around Schiphol airport. 

On Monday the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam called on people who make the Hajj, the pilgrimage, to Mecca to take selfies of their trip for a new exhibition, despite the fact that the Saudi authorities banned taking photos and selfies at religious and spiritual places in the country last year, AT5 reports.

The photo ban also applies to the Masjid al-Haram mosque, which is known as a pilgrimage site during Hajj. 

Artist Joost Zwanenburg made an error when he painted a new war memorial at the Herenhof shopping center in Alphen aan den Rijn. The plane depicted on the monument is not the Halifax that crashed in 1944, as it was meant to be, but a different type, NU.nl reports.

Amsterdam has the most to offer of all municipalities in the Netherlands when it comes to culture. Maastricht and Leeuwarden are in second and third place respectively, according to the new Atlas for Municipalities presented in Leeuwarden on Wednesday afternoon, Het Parool reports.

Among the provinces, Groningen has the biggest cultural offering, followed by Zeeland and Noord-Holland. Flevoland is last on the ranking.

The Anne Frank Foundation released two previously unseen pages from the diary of Anne Frank. On the two pages, which were covered by brown paper, the Jewish girl wrote sexual jokes and what she thought about sex education, ANP reports.

The success of a few large museums in the Netherlands created the image that all is well in the museum world, but that is not the case at all, according to the Council for Culture. Small museums in the country are struggling, the Council warns, RTL Nieuws reports.

Public attractions like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam with its collection of Rembrandts, or the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague with its Mondriaans, have nothing to complain about. But the smaller museums are having a very hard time attracting visitors, according to the Council.

A lifelike doll of Amalia, crown princess of the Netherlands, will be on display at the Art Dolls Expo in Amsterdam this weekend. After that the doll will be auctioned off on Catawiki. This is the first time a doll is made to look like a Dutch princess, RTL Nieuws reports.

The doll was made by Russian doll maker Elena Timkaeva and stands 69 centimeters tall. 

The Dutch government is allocating an annual 80 million euros a year for culture education, according to the memorandum Culture in an open society that Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science presented on Monday. Her ambition is to make sure that the cultural sector "flourishes", NOS reports.

A rarely seen early work by Vincent van Gogh will be displayed by art dealer Ivo Bouwman at the international art fair TEFAF in Maastricht on Saturday. The painting, titled Cityscape with drawbridge, has been privately owned for 114 years, ANP reports. 

In order to prevent the local film industry form being wiped out by foreign movies and series, entertainment distributors serving the Netherlands market should financially support more Dutch productions, the Raad voor Cultuur stated in a report. The top government advisory board for culture and the arts said those companies should also be forced to pay a tax on its income derived from Netherlands consumers to support the entertainment industry there.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam bought a painting by Norse artist Edvard Munch - a portrait of German scientist Felix Auerbach. This is the first time this painting can be seen in the Netherlands, and according to the museum, also the only Munch portrait in a Dutch collection.

The museum unveiled the painting on Tuesday, the 74th anniversary of Munch's death. Munch (1863- 1944) painted the portrait in 1906, at the request of the German scientist.