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The Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, has once again offered tickets on its website for the anthological exhibition of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), one of the masters of the Dutch Golden Age.
Opened to the public on February 10, just two days later all the tickets had already been sold: 450,000 in total.
Despite the fact that 200,000 of those tickets were purchased in advance, the demand has not ceased, and the room has kept its digital window closed until this Monday.
Although the service immediately collapsed, access is now possible again.
Although the night schedule now runs until 11:00 p.m., from Thursday to Sunday, the museum does not clarify how many tickets can be purchased or until when.
And on the web there are almost no schedules available.
The situation reflects the attractions and drawbacks of large museum proposals of this kind:
More information
Vermeer's light floods Amsterdam in the exhibition of the season in Europe
The exhibition dedicated to Vermeer will close on June 4, and has been preceded by intense work by the Rijksmuseum to ensure the temporary transfer of 28 of the 37 works attributed to the artist.
It is the first time that the National Museum of Art and History of the Netherlands manages to host the largest anthology dedicated to one of the painters who has best recreated, and illuminated, the intimacy of the home.
As the quality of the paintings matches the publicity made in the months prior to the opening, interest has exceeded expectations.
In addition, the management of the Rijksmuseum maintains its desire to guarantee a quiet visit, because many of the paintings are small and difficult to admire if there are crowds.
A difficult balance to strike to date.
What happened with the tickets in Amsterdam is not new.
In 2016, the Noordbrabants museum, located in the Dutch city of Den Bosch, and El Prado, in Madrid, commemorated the 500th anniversary of the death of Hieronymus van Aken Bosch, El Bosco.
The celebration kicked off on February 13 in the Netherlands and the exhibition attracted 421,000 visitors.
The Prado then received 600,000 people, and both were the most successful of their kind by number of people.
According to Charles de Mooij, director of Noordbrabants at the time, they calculated that they could add up to 275,000 visitors.
“We hired an expert in crowd management, and the museum was simulated with the help of a computer program to measure all the possibilities.
It was a regional museum, but with problems similar to those that the Rijksmuseum may have now, with Vermeer”,
he says, in a telephone conversation.
The pull of Bosch's works ended up prevailing and the hours had to be extended.
“Normally, Dutch museums close on Monday, so we decided to open earlier and ended up closing at 11pm.
The last weekend you could enter all day.
The additional difficulty in these cases is that you need more security personnel, and you have to look for them almost on the fly ”, he indicates.
Now retired, he admits that the quality of works such as those by Bosch or Vermeer also has an impact on assignments.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, "you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going."
in telephone conversation.
The pull of Bosch's works ended up prevailing and the hours had to be extended.
“Normally, Dutch museums close on Monday, so we decided to open earlier and ended up closing at 11pm.
The last weekend you could enter all day.
The additional difficulty in these cases is that you need more security personnel, and you have to look for them almost on the fly ”, he indicates.
Now retired, he admits that the quality of works such as those by Bosch or Vermeer also has an impact on assignments.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, "you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going."
in telephone conversation.
The pull of Bosch's works ended up prevailing and the hours had to be extended.
“Normally, Dutch museums close on Monday, so we decided to open earlier and ended up closing at 11pm.
The last weekend you could enter all day.
The additional difficulty in these cases is that you need more security personnel, and you have to look for them almost on the fly ”, he indicates.
Now retired, he admits that the quality of works such as those by Bosch or Vermeer also has an impact on assignments.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, "you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going."
The pull of Bosch's works ended up prevailing and the hours had to be extended.
“Normally, Dutch museums close on Monday, so we decided to open earlier and ended up closing at 11pm.
The last weekend you could enter all day.
The additional difficulty in these cases is that you need more security personnel, and you have to look for them almost on the fly ”, he indicates.
Now retired, he admits that the quality of works such as those by Bosch or Vermeer also has an impact on assignments.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, "you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going."
The pull of Bosch's works ended up prevailing and the hours had to be extended.
“Normally, Dutch museums close on Monday, so we decided to open earlier and ended up closing at 11pm.
The last weekend you could enter all day.
The additional difficulty in these cases is that you need more security personnel, and you have to look for them almost on the fly ”, he indicates.
Now retired, he admits that the quality of works such as those by Bosch or Vermeer also has an impact on assignments.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, "you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going."
“Normally, Dutch museums close on Monday, so we decided to open earlier and ended up closing at 11pm.
The last weekend you could enter all day.
The additional difficulty in these cases is that you need more security personnel, and you have to look for them almost on the fly ”, he indicates.
Now retired, he admits that the quality of works such as those by Bosch or Vermeer also has an impact on assignments.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, “you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going”.
“Normally, Dutch museums close on Monday, so we decided to open earlier and ended up closing at 11pm.
The last weekend you could enter all day.
The additional difficulty in these cases is that you need more security personnel, and you have to look for them almost on the fly ”, he indicates.
Now retired, he admits that the quality of works such as those by Bosch or Vermeer also has an impact on assignments.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, “you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going”.
The last weekend you could enter all day.
The additional difficulty in these cases is that you need more security personnel, and you have to look for them almost on the fly ”, he indicates.
Now retired, he admits that the quality of works such as those by Bosch or Vermeer also has an impact on assignments.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, “you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going”.
The last weekend you could enter all day.
The additional difficulty in these cases is that you need more security personnel, and you have to look for them almost on the fly ”, he indicates.
Now retired, he admits that the quality of works such as those by Bosch or Vermeer also has an impact on assignments.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, “you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going”.
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, "you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going."
“It is not always possible to request that the return period be extended.
On the other hand, this would hinder the very management of the calendar of a museum, which has other appointments already scheduled”.
Deep down, he points out, "you never know if you will have the expected success, and it is better to see how things are going."
The homage to Bosch at the Prado Museum took place between May 31 and September 11, 2016, with an extension until the 25th of that same month.
“The closing hours had to be extended until 10:00 p.m. from Monday to Saturday, and Sundays and holidays until 9:00 p.m., almost from the beginning.
The last two weeks, it lasted until midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday”, indicate museum sources.
Despite all these initiatives, "on September 23 the
sold out was posted
, due to the impossibility of prolonging the sample”.
On the other hand, "all the tickets were sold with a time code [as now in the Rijksmuseum, and then you can see the permanent collection until 5:00 p.m.] to facilitate access and control the capacity."
"The policy was that no one was left without seeing the exhibition, which meant that the last weekend had to be open until dawn," according to El Prado.
The other problem with this type of highly visited exhibition is the resale of tickets.
Charles de Mooij recalls that seven years ago "there was movement on a digital and also a physical scale, in the vicinity of Noordbrabants", despite the fact that they put a lot of effort into avoiding the latter.
At the moment, platforms such as the Dutch Marktplaats, or Ticketswap offer tickets for the Rijksmuseum.
Marktplaats is an Internet auction, and this Thursday 4 were offered for a total of 135 euros.
The first bids had already raised the price to 160 euros (an adult ticket is worth 30 euros on the museum's website; up to 18 years old, the visit is free).
In Ticketswap, its website indicated —at 3:00 p.m.— that there was “one ticket available, 1,001 sold and 8,373 requested”.