To take a break from all the Coronation hectic and work, I decided on Sunday 7 May 2023 to visit the Groninger Museum in the Dutch city where I live. It was the very last day of the “Gianni Versace Retrospective” exhibition and the display of the Rembrandt painting “De Vaandeldrager“, bought by the Dutch State in January 2022. So it was now or never.
It was less of a royal break than expected. I really loved the Versace exhibition, which was rather large, with designs from the 1970s to the 1990s. And just when I thought I had seen it all, there it was: THE DRESS that the late Princess Diana wore 1991 for a photo-shoot with Patrick Demarchelier for Harper’s Bazaar. It is nowadays in the possession of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I really must have missed some articles about the opening of the exhibition in December 2022. I had seen it before im May 2017 at Kensington Palace, but the display this time was better and there was certainly more light.
Apart from another exhibition, “The Art of Hipgnosis” (until 14 May 2023), with album covers of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel and 10 CC, there also was “Porcelein, Kunst, Design Nymphenburg x Groninger Museum (until 5 May 2024). Between all the porcelain it actually had an extra royal tough: Erwin Olaf’s 2021 photo of Franz, Duke of Bavaria and his partner Thomas Greinwald at home at the Nymphenburg Palace in München, Germany.
You can imagine that I went back home, totally satisfied … after having spent four (!!!) hours inside the museum.