A bell rings several times as you enter the exhibition titled
Slavery,
at the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of art and history of the Netherlands, in Amsterdam. It is not a greeting, but a warning of what awaits the visitor. The ringing of bells has a practical function to announce prayers, weddings and funerals, or perhaps the threat of floods and fires. In the plantations of the Dutch colonies in South Africa and Asia, in Brazil and the Caribbean, it marked the beginning and the end of the exhausting day of work of the slaves. A delay at dawn was severely punished. In the twilight, a harvest with fewer kilos than those stipulated by the master posed a new risk of sanction. The Dutch colonial past spans the 17th to 19th centuries and has not been properly scrutinized. That is why the Rijksmuseum dedicates for the first time an exhibition to a system that marked the economic and social history of the country.Through the lives of 10 people, he traces the process that allowed sugar, tobacco, coffee, cotton and cocoa to be brought to Europe thanks to slavery.
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The Rijksmuseum has been preparing thoroughly for four years, and along the way it has learned to look at the million pieces in its collection differently. Slavery is difficult to illustrate from the point of view of those affected, who did not have the right to read and write, had no possessions, and were seldom featured in paintings or portraits. There are account books on the figures of the traffic, engravings of the farms and pictures of their owners, but the museum wanted to get closer to the slaves and has also delved into oral history. “We have examined the songs and stories from their respective homelands, which were passed down from one generation to the next. There you see that they were dehumanized, but they knew that the treatment they received was horrible and they knew how to preserve their own dignity ”, explains Valika Smeulders,one of the four curators in the exhibition.
Although the pandemic has delayed the opening of the exhibition until June, King William will inaugurate it this Tuesday.
Starting tomorrow, secondary school students will be able to see it and an
online
visit will also be available
.
During a year, in addition, the colonial bond of 75 works in the permanent collection will be explained with posters attached to them.
Given the restrictions due to the coronavirus, the institution has previously invited the international press to visit the rooms.
The route is breathtaking at times and is set up to encourage reflection.
Slavery is difficult to illustrate;
those affected did not have the right to read and write
The anonymity and uprooting imposed on the slaves made it almost impossible to resist a great deal for Europe where the Spanish, English, Portuguese, Danish, and also the Dutch participated. The latter transported between 660,000 and 1.1 million people to present-day Indonesia and the farms of South Africa, a route covered by the East India Company, according to the calculations provided in the sample. On the other hand, of the total of 12.5 million people enslaved by European merchants, the Dutch forcibly took some 600,000 people from Africa to North America, Suriname, Brazil and the Caribbean. In these cases, control was in the hands of the West India Company.
The portraits of Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit, a merchant couple who made their fortune thanks to slave labor in Brazil, painted by Rembrandt in 1634.RIJKSMUSEUM
Smeulders says that in the seventeenth century a debate broke out about who could be enslaved, and Christians were excluded.
If any fell into the hands of merchants, they had to try to rescue them.
"There was a rejection of slavery in the then Dutch Republic, but when the two Companies needed labor in enormous quantities to compete with the Spanish and Portuguese, it was considered that black Africans were predestined to serve the white."
Although it has international loans for the exhibition, the Rijksmuseum has searched its collections and found objects that raise unexpected doubts.
Like a brass necklace from 1689, decorated with acanthus leaves and the coat of arms of a patrician family, donated in 1881. “The file stated that it was from a dog and it was not critically analyzed, despite the fact that there were similar necklaces. on the neck of African servants in paintings of the time, ”continues Smeulders.
People visiting the exhibition 'Slavery' at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam on May 12.KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP
Slavery was prohibited in the country and allowed in the colonies. In the archives has also been found the story of Paulus Maurus, a black servant of the house of the necklace in question. He is one of the 10 characters in the sample, and the curator wonders if he was bought to work in the metropolis. He was not the only one in his situation, and in the land of the boss they could work, marry and start a family. If overseas the initials of their owner were branded on their skin, "on Dutch soil the necklace could symbolize that it was still seen as an object," he adds.
Although slavery has existed in all cultures and continents throughout history, the arrival of Europeans in Asia and Africa hardened and expanded the system in their colonies.
People uprooted from their land were separated from their families and communities, and could be moved from one continent to another.
Slave Sapali fled a Suriname plantation with rice seeds hidden in her braided hair
In one of the museum rooms there is a stocks with chains and bolts to hold the legs. Arranged on the ground, it does not need explanations and gives way to another story with a point of magical realism. It is that of Sapali, a slave who fled a Suriname plantation with rice seeds hidden in her braided hair. "A fertile secret," says the audio guide. The escapees like Sapali, called
maroons
(maroons), formed communities in the jungle, something that also happened in Brazil, Colombia or the United States. In Suriname, women brought food with them, and Sapali is considered the founder of collective memory. His story of courage and foresight had not been told in Dutch museums, and in a glass case there is a stalk of rice of a variety named after him.
Dutch engraving from around 1850 showing slaves digging ditches, part of the RijksmuseumRijksmuseum collection
And what was known "at home" about the living conditions of the slave?
The sample indicates that the press of the seventeenth century spoke little of their hardships.
He preferred to focus on fighting for trade routes.
To illustrate, we include Oopjen Coppit and her husband, Marten Soolmans, painted by Rembrandt in 1634. Both portraits hang in the Rijksmuseum, and reflect the story of a young married couple whose family owned a sugar refinery collected in Brazil by slaves.
The profusion of intermediaries until they reached the supply market in Amsterdam diluted the reality of the plantations, so they boasted of wealth without complexes.
The exhibition plays with spaces and mirrors, which "sometimes block vision to underline that there are things that went unnoticed, or else they did not want to look at each other", points out Eveline Sint Nicolaas, another of the conservatives. At the exit, the visitor is encouraged to contribute with their reflections to the making of 10 sculptures with the stories presented.