Press releases

Mauritshuis & Fabrique des Lumières present #mygirlwithapearl – The Immersive Edition

Museum and digital art centre provide a platform for creative makers from across the world New call #mygirlwithapearl

08 Aug 2024

Een meisje met een parel oorbel en een tulband keert zich naar de kijker

The Mauritshuis, Nationale-Nederlanden, Fabrique des Lumières, Addikt (concept & graphics), Kloaq (audio design) together developed a spectacular new presentation about the world-famous Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer. This is a continuation of the successful worldwide open call issued by the Mauritshuis in 2023 with the title #mygirlwithapearl. This immersive edition shows a selection of last year's entries, invites visitors to look at 17th-century art with different eyes and also comes with a new call: let yourself be inspired and make your own Girl. For Fabrique des Lumières, #mygirlwithapearl – The Immersive Edition is a wonderful addition to its current exhibition Dutch Masters, which features 17th-century paintings.

Immersion

She is world-famous, but Johannes Vermeer's original masterpiece can only be admired in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Girl with a Pearl Earring is an inspiration to many, as you can immediately see when you type #mygirlwithapearl in social media. In Fabrique des Lumières' new immersive exhibition, the old and the new come together in an extraordinary ensemble. In the Studio, an 80m² space, visitors are first completely immersed in the painting and subsequently surrounded by a large number of interpretations. These can be beautiful and original, funny or weird. In a seven-minute presentation with original music composed for this event, many striking variations can be viewed.

Lumiere X Mauritshuis 02

Audiovisual experience

“This world premiere is the first exhibition that we have produced completely ourselves in Amsterdam. It is a fantastic addition to our exhibition From Vermeer to Van Gogh – Dutch Masters. From Vermeer to Van Gogh can be seen till the end of this year and has attracted over 350,000 visitors since March”, says director Patrick Alders. “We offer new ways of looking at art. Digital exhibitions make art accessible to a broad audience. We want to stimulate, touch and overwhelm visitors by offering them an exciting audiovisual experience. With this exhibition in our Studio, we have definitely achieved this. It is a wonderful symbiosis of the old and the new. We also think it is really cool that the Mauritshuis is open to such a new way of experiencing art.”

New call: make your own Girl

“In 2023, our icon Girl with a Pearl Earring spent six weeks in the Rijksmuseum for the great Vermeer exhibition. Making a virtue of necessity, we called on people to submit their own interpretation of this famous painting. This resulted in a huge explosion of creativity from all over the world. Out of all the entries on #mygirlwithapearl, we selected 170 very different works and showed these digitally in the spot that is home to the real Girl. This was a special tribute to our most popular masterpiece”, says Martine Gosselink, the director of the Mauritshuis. “And it's really special that creative interpretations are still coming in. Paintings, drawings, works made from wool, clay, wood, fabric, buttons, ceramics, Lego or other materials. This is why we decided to give the project a fresh impetus in this special way. A new element is that video creations can also be submitted now.”

#Mygirlwithapearl – The Immersive Edition can be seen from 4 September till the end of 2024.

For tickets: https://www.fabrique-lumieres.com/nl/tickets
*https://www.fabrique-lumieres.com/en/online-ticketing

For opening hours and rates:
https://www.fabrique-lumieres.com/nl/plan-je-bezoek/openingstijden-en-tarieven
* https://www.fabrique-lumieres.com/en/visit/opening-hours-and-rates

New entries

Everyone can get inspired by #mygirlwithapearl – The Immersive Edition in Amsterdam and the original in The Hague. Once again, new entries have a chance to be displayed in the Mauritshuis. This will be done digitally in a 3D-printed frame (an exact copy of the original), which will get a nice spot in the foyer of this museum in The Hague. The exact conditions and specifications for sending new Girls can be found at: www.mauritshuis.nl/mygirl

About Fabrique des Lumières

On 22 April 2022, Fabrique des Lumières, the Netherlands' biggest immersive art centre, opened in the Zuiveringshal West on the Westergasterrein in Amsterdam. In late 2023, we celebrated a special milestone: we welcomed our millionth visitor. With this achievement, our digital art centre is proud to be one of the five most visited cultural destinations in Amsterdam. Unlike the other attractions, such as the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House, Fabrique des Lumières is mostly visited by young people from the Netherlands.

About Nationale-Nederlanden

Nationale-Nederlanden (part of NN Group) has been a partner of the Mauritshuis since 2016 and is sponsoring #mygirlwithapearl - The Immersive Edition. Together with its partners, NN is committed to making art and culture accessible to a broad audience in order to contribute to everyone's mental well-being. NN has a long history in the field of cultural sponsorship, with a focus on visual arts, museums and music.