Before the pandemic, the Van Gogh Museum was a major global tourist destination, with some 2.1 million visitors filling its galleries in 2019. The vast majority, 85 percent, came from other countries to gaze at masterworks like Sunflowers.
Visiting Amsterdam during the first week of March, I didn’t imagine that the more than 140 museums in the capital of the Netherlands would shudder within days. On a press trip to cover TEFAF Maastricht, our small group got a sneak peek at upcoming exhibitions at the city’s largest art museums that had to be quickly transformed into digital displays to keep audiences engaged.