The CNA seeks to enhance the field of Dutch and Flemish art internationally through collaboration and facilitation. Through its programs and events, the Center convenes experts, students, collectors, and art lovers—all with the aim of building meaningful connections and sharing knowledge. In addition to investigations of artistic and cultural history, the CNA also enables study, exploration, and discussion of the innumerable relationships between the early modern Low Countries and our own time and place.

The CNA is committed to centering quality and a spirit of generosity through collaboration and partnership, promoting openness and public knowledge, and investing in accessibility and inclusiveness.

We also acknowledge the continued need to make the field of Netherlandish art history more equitable and seek to foster professionals of all identities and nationalities representing a range of backgrounds, prior experiences, and research priorities.

The Founders of the Center for Netherlandish Art are Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie.

Integrated within the MFA, the CNA draws on the expertise of the Museum’s staff in paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, works on paper, libraries and archives, conservation and scientific research, exhibitions and design, education and public programs, community engagement, publications, and visitor experience.

Staff

• Christopher D. M. Atkins, PhD, Van Otterloo-Weatherbie Director
• Nicole Elizabeth Cook, PhD, senior program manager
• Kennedy Harwood, coordinator

Affiliated Staff

• Marietta Cambareri, senior curator of European Sculpture and Jetskalina H. Phillips Curator of Judaica
• Courtney Harris, associate curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of Europe
• Katherine Harper, curatorial research associate, Department of Prints and Drawings
• Frederick Ilchman, Chair and Mrs. Russell W. Baker Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe
• Antien Knaap, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe
• Rhona MacBeth, director of Conservation and Scientific Research, head of Paintings Conservation, and Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo Conservator of Paintings
• Marcella Paez, coordinator, Art of Europe
• Benjamin Weiss, Leonard A. Lauder Senior Curator of Visual Culture, Department of Prints and Drawings

Advisory Council

• Marisa Bass, professor of the History of Art, Yale University
• Hanneke Grootenboer, professor of Early Modern Art and Visual Culture, University of Amsterdam
• Beth Harris, cofounder and executive director, Smarthistory
• Erma Hermens, director, Hamilton Kerr Institute; and deputy director, Conservation and Heritage Science, Fitzwilliam Museum
• Joachim Homann, Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings, Harvard Art Museums
• Koenraad Jonckheere, professor of Northern Renaissance and Baroque Art, Ghent University
• Jeffrey Muller, professor of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University
• Pieter Roelofs, head of Fine and Decorative Arts, Rijksmuseum
• Braden Scott, assistant professor of Early Modern Art and Architecture, University of Manitoba
• Russell Shorto, Director, New Amsterdam Project; and senior scholar, New Netherland Institute
• Peter Sutton, former executive director, Bruce Museum
• Michael Zell, professor of Baroque and 18th-Century Art, Boston University
• Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, CNA founders
• Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, CNA founders

2017

Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo join Susan and Matthew Weatherbie to donate 114 Dutch and Flemish paintings, the library of late scholar Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, and the initial endowment funds for the Center for Netherlandish Art, the first of its kind in the United States.

2019

The Kingdom of the Netherlands appoints the Center’s four founders Knights in the Order of Orange-Nassau.

The Dutch government establishes the Kingdom of the Netherlands Fund for Emerging Scholars.

Collection highlights travel to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

2021

The CNA officially launches in November.

The MFA unveils newly renovated galleries of Dutch and Flemish art.

The Government of Flanders establishes the Flanders State of the Art Fellowship at the CNA.

2022

The CNA Library opens to the public.

The CNA Fellowship Program begins with the inaugural 2022–2023 cohort.

2023

“Dutch Art in a Global Age,” a collection-based traveling exhibition, opens at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Kimbell Museum of Art in Fort Worth.

The MFA publishes Dutch Art in a Global Age, a companion book highlighting new scholarship by MFA staff, collaborators, and external scholars.

In partnership with the Rijksmuseum, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, and Harvard Art Museums, the CNA hosts the first Summer Institute for Netherlandish Art.

2024

The CNA welcomes the inaugural Hans Brenninkmeyer Senior Visiting Fellow to Boston.

Moving Forward

The CNA continues to initiate programs in collaboration. Current partnerships include CODART, Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA), the Netherlands Innovation Network, the Rijksmuseum, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Harvard Art Museums, Smarthistory, the Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH), and Yale University.

On view at the MFA through November 30, 2025

For this exhibition, five Boston teenagers participating in the MFA’s Curatorial Study Hall program area collaborated with the CNA to explore death and decay. The works on view convey death in various ways—from the choice of subjects to how artists represent them. Although primarily featuring work from the MFA’s collection of Dutch and Flemish art, the exhibition also includes paintings, prints, and drawings from France, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere.

On view at Yale University Art Gallery from February 17–July 23, 2023.
On view at the MFA from November 18, 2023–December 8, 2024

A collaboration between the Center for Netherlandish Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, “Thinking Small: Dutch Art to Scale” explored an intriguing selection of objects from the 17th-century Netherlands that were designed to elicit slow, intimate, and contemplative engagement on the part of their original audiences. With objects drawn from rich collections across Yale’s campus as well as the CNA, the exhibition compelled viewers to reconsider their relationship to the world around them.

On view at the MFA from November 12, 2022–November 5, 2023

Centered around her rare series The Five Senses (1650), this exhibition was the first gallery space in the Americas dedicated to the art of Michaelina Wautier (1614–1689), a painter from Brussels all but forgotten until the recent rediscovery of her work. Organized by the CNA in collaboration with a professor and six doctoral students from Brown University, it presented new scholarship about the artist and her unusual career as a female painter working in mid-17th-century Brussels.

Promoting scholarship is core to the mission of CNA. This series of digital publications documents and disseminates research and activities facilitated and supported by the CNA.

• February 2024—Thinking Small: Dutch Art to Scale (PDF, 1.8 MB)
• December 2022—Michaelina Wautier and The Five Senses: Innovation in 17th-Century Flemish Painting (PDF, 12.9 MB)

Thanks to this collaboration between the CNA and the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York, now you can identify and locate museums in the United States that collect and display 17th-century Dutch art. You can also find resources to expand your knowledge of 17th-century Dutch art and understand its impact on collecting and exhibitions in the United States.

Read short essays by CNA staff, fellows, and interns, and the larger MFA community to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes at the Museum and our research center.

The CNA has partnered with Smarthistory on a series of videos about Netherlandish art from the MFA’s collection. Learn more about a fascinating range of artworks—from a Rembrandt self-portrait to an ornate cup crafted from a coconut.

Watch full-length lectures and events hosted by the CNA and hear from some of the world’s leading experts on Netherlandish art.