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CAU > Seminars and Study Tours > The Galleries and Gardens of Holland

The Galleries and Gardens of Holland

April 28-May 7, 2010

There is still space available in this program.
You may register online or by mail.

At the height of tulip season, Frank Robinson, director of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, and Don Rakow, director of Cornell Plantations, will lead us on an exciting tour of Holland's masterpieces, both fine art and botanical. At the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Frank will share his knowledge of Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, and Steen. We'll also visit the Van Gogh Museum and museums in nearby towns featuring the works of Mondrian, van der Leck, Seurat, Redon, and Picasso. We'll see how the art of Holland has for centuries reflected the sensibilities of the region and of its best-known master, Rembrandt—highly democratic, supported by an affluent middle class, and responsive to an unfettered range of subjects.

Those subjects include a fair number of horticultural ones, enriching our tour of the gardens of Amsterdam and other treasures like the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden, one of the oldest gardens in the world. Under Don's tutelage we'll appreciate not only the rise of plant exploration fostered by colonialism, but also the birth of botany as a discipline separate from medicine. We'll learn how the Hollanders' penchant for bulbs gave rise to the seventeenth-century's "tulipmania," its financial collapse something of an object lesson in our own economic times. The commercial as well as aesthetic focus of those who breed flowers is nowhere clearer than at the International Flower Auction in Aalsmeer, the largest daily plant auction in the world. A canal cruise, a performance at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, and meals featuring divine cheese, chocolate, cookies, and coffee will round out this feast for the senses.

Double occupancy:$7,950
Single supplement:$1,400
Fitness scale:Slightly strenuous. May require extended walking over uneven ground as well as the ability to climb stairs and to stand for considerable periods of time.

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