In this introductory lecture, Dr. Katharina Van Cauteren, Chief of Staff of The Phoebus Foundation and curator of the exhibition Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks, will take the audience on a journey through more than three centuries of Western art history. At the end of the Middle Ages, the small patch of land that we now call “Flanders” was the center of the world. Cities such as Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent were the New York, London, and Hong Kong of the 15th and early 16th centuries. An art and luxury market soon emerged there that had no equal anywhere else north of the Alps. Van Cauteren will tell this exceptional story through masterpieces by artists from the Southern Netherlands such as Hans Memling, Quinten Metsys, Jan Gossaert, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens.
Katharina Van Cauteren (born in Ghent, Belgium, 1981) studied art history at Leuven University. She earned her doctorate in 2010 with a thesis on the Brussels painter Hendrick De Clerck (1560–1630) and his role as court propagandist for Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella. Van Cauteren worked at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (KMSKA) in Antwerp from 2012 to 2014 as collections researcher and exhibition curator, during which time she took Jan Van Eyck to the Netherlands and Rubens to India, while also marking the 350th anniversary of Antwerp’s Academy of Arts together with fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck. From 2014 onward, Van Cauteren has been Chief of Staff of The Phoebus Foundation. She has curated all of the foundation’s major exhibitions: The Birth of Capitalism, the Golden Age of Flanders (Caemersklooster, Ghent, 2016), Rooted (Caemersklooster, Ghent, 2017), Vossen (Waasland, Belgium, 2018), Lace Is More (Moorsel, Aalst, 2019), and The Bold and the Beautiful (Antwerp, 2020). She is always up for intriguing collaborations, which is how the ceiling that Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) painted for his home came to be re-created at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem under her supervision in 2021–2022. Furthermore, two major exhibitions, From Memling to Rubens and Crazy About Dymphna, traveled to Tallinn, Estonia, in the summer of 2021. Van Cauteren is the curator for the exhibition Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks, which was presented at the Denver Art Museum in 2022 and opens at the Dallas Museum of Art on February 19, 2023.
This talk is open to the public. DMA Members are invited to reserve separate tickets to attend both the panel conversation and the members-only reception celebrating the opening of Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks. Become a DMA Member today to gain access to the celebration by visiting dma.org/support/dma-members.
The lecture will begin at 7:00 p.m. in Horchow Auditorium, and the Members-Only Opening Reception will be from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Separate reservations are required for both events.