You would think that Anke Van Wagenberg’s day job would be a serious impediment for doing any form of serious extracurricular writing. As the senior curator of the Academy Art Museum, Van Wagenberg is in charge of the dozens of art programs and exhibitions the AAM produces every year, but also is responsible for the the cataloging and conservation of the museum’s 1,500 objects in their collection. Not an easy gig.
That might be one of the reasons it has taken Anke fourteen years to complete a massive two-volume survey of the complete works of the artist Jan Baptist Weenix and his son, Jan Weenix, entitled Painting for Princes: Dutch Art by Jan Baptist Weenix & Jan Weenix.
The father, who died young at 39 years old, and his son, produced over 500 paintings during their collective lifetime which Van Wagenberg has dutifully documented as part of her own ongoing scholarship in Dutch paintings.
The results of this extraordinary undertaking is finally in print which will add significantly to the art world’s knowledge of these sometimes forgotten Dutch Masters, whose work compares well with contemporaries of the time, including the likes of Rembrandt and Rubin.
The Spy caught up with Anke a few days ago to talk about both father and son and their lasting impact on Western art as she prepares for a series of lectures on the Weenex books before returning for many more years of research on the drawings these two men produced during their lifetimes.
This video is approximately two minutes in length. Anke Van Wagenberg will launch the book’s publication as a Kittredge-Wilson lecturer at the Academy Art Museum at 6pm on Friday May 18. For more information please go here.
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