The biennial Frans Hals Lecture is a new tradition that began on 1 September 2016. That day was the 350th anniversary of the artist’s interment in St Bavo’s Church.
This fact that prompted the Frans Hals Museum to celebrate the topicality of one of the Greats of the Golden Age with a festive lecture in the church where Hals lies buried. It is in two parts. It starts with a layman’s lecture by a renowned expert about an aspect of Frans Hals’ work. This is then followed by a new story by a fiction writer inspired by the life (or work) of the Haarlem innovator. This year, curator Dennis Weller (USA) and author Kristien Hemmerechts (BE) are fulling these honourable tasks. Nelleke Boor, Hanna Sohn and Nozomi Akamatsu will play a musical intermezzo.
Frans Hals, Portrait of Jacobus Hendricksz Zaffius, ca. 1611
“Fiction and non-fiction are not strictly-separate entities. The museum not only teaches, it also surprises, touches and amazes. It is a factory of facts, as well as a place where the imagination is stimulated to be capricious and deviant,” says director Ann Demeester.
Photo: Maarten Nauw
The lecture will be carried out by Dr. Dennis Weller, curator of Northern European Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, USA. Weller obtained his doctorate with his thesis on the Haarlem painter Jan Miense Molenaer, and has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and for The Burlington Magazine, among others. He has contributed to several publications about the painters of the Golden Age and to an investigation into the presence of Frans Hals in America for the Center for the History of Collecting / The Frick Collection, New York. Dennis Weller’s lecture was in English, and a Dutch translation is available.
Photo: Maarten Nauw
The fictional story of the second Frans Hals Lecture is written and told by author Kristien Hemmerechts. For it, Hemmerechts stages a meeting between Frans Hals and Jacobus Zaffius, a catholic clergy painted by Hals. Hemmerechts has published numerous novels, travel stories, collections of stories, and essays. In addition to lecturing and guest lectures at various universities, Hemmerechts has regularly written reviews of English-language literature for Flemish and Dutch newspapers. The reading by Kristien Hemmerechts was in Dutch, and an English translation is available.
Both lectures are available on this page on the right side under download.
Photo: Maarten Nauw
Ticket costs €7.50 and can be ordered here. Friends of the museum receive a discount and pay just €5 per person on presentation of their Friends card.
Doors open: 7.30 p.m.
Start: 8 p.m.
Please note: this event does not take place in the Frans Hals Museum, but in the Grote or St.-Bavokerk, Grote Markt, Haarlem.
