On 1 September 2020, the Frans Hals Museum and CODART jointly organized the third Frans Hals Lecture. The recording of the lecture is available above.
The first Frans Hals Lecture was held on 1 September 2016 in the St Bavo’s Church in Haarlem. On this day in 1666, 350 years earlier, Frans Hals was buried in this church in Haarlem. The lecture consists of a scholarly lecture and a literary essay. It was set up as a biennial event, intended for peers (academics, museum professionals) and Frans Hals adepts.
This year‘s Frans Hals Lecture took take place online due to Covid-19, and not at the St Bavo’s Church in Haarlem. The lecture included presentations by Dr. Norbert Middelkoop and Prof. Dr. Steven Nadler, and concluded with a live opportunity for questions. The event was moderated by Marrigje Rikken, Head of Collections of the Frans Hals Museum.
Norbert Middelkoop is Curator of Paintings, Prints and Drawings in the Amsterdam Museum and a member of CODART since its founding in 1998. He defended his PhD thesis Schutters, gildebroeders, regenten en regentessen. Het Amsterdamse corporatiestuk (Civic Guardsmen, Governors and Guild Members: the Amsterdam Corporate Group Portrait) in 2019. He is currently affiliated part time with the Frans Hals Museum working on an exhibition project. Norbert Middelkoop talked about the Meagre Company, Hals’s only Amsterdam civic guard painting. Generously lent by the Rijksmuseum, it has been on show since 19 September amidst his five Haarlem civic guard paintings, offering an excellent opportunity to compare.
Steven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy and Evjue-Bascom Professor of Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Among his publications are Rembrandt’s Jews (2003), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Spinoza: A Life (1999), which won the Koret Jewish Book Award; and The Philosopher, the Priest and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes (2013). He discussed the problems, pitfalls, questions and obstacles one encounters with compiling a biography of Frans Hals.