This spring ‘flower mania’ grips the Frans Hals Museum. From 20 March to 17 May the museum’s rooms and corridors will be filled with bouquets of flowers and other floral art in specially-made flower vases and appropriate antique pots.  Alongside this display of magnificent flowers the display focuses on flowers in the Golden Age. As well as splendid flower still lifes, visitors can see an authentic Tulip Book with work by the famous painter Judith Leyster.  A number of paintings and prints tell the story of the seventeenth-century outbreak of tulip mania—the incredible speculation in tulip bulbs, when a bulb was literally worth its weight in gold.

There are flowers all year round in the Frans Hals Museum—in paintings, on tiles, on wallpaper and in other works of art—but at this time of the year we also have the real thing! Volunteers from the Friends of the Frans Hals Museum will be brightening up the museum with tulips, narcissi, hyacinths and other spring flowers. They will be using vases from the museum’s collection by Bernard Heesen, Jan van de Vaart, Piet Hein Eek, Bert Frijns and others. The Friends’ magnificent flower arrangements have become a highly-valued tradition that the museum has cherished for many years. This spring the flowers can be enjoyed even longer, thanks in part to the help of master florist Paul Wijkmeijer.

Flower Mania is part of a joint venture involving the Frans Hals Museum, Keukenhof, the Jopenkerk and Haarlem Marketing. Together they will take visitors on a Tulip Mania tour through Haarlem and Keukenhof park where the tulip mania of the Golden Age comes to life again. Haarlem, situated in the bulb-growing area, has for years been regarded as the city of flowers.