THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Nina Siegal
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| “Typhoon as Elieser” by Humberto Tan, features Typhoon, a dutch rapper, dressed as a 17th-century servant. The photograph is displayed in “Dutch Masters Revisited” at the Amsterdam Museum.Credit...Humberto Tan, via Amsterdam Museum |
AMSTERDAM — Elisabeth Samson, an 18th-century freeborn black woman, made millions as a coffee planter and exporter using slave labor in the Dutch colony of Suriname. She was one of the wealthiest women of the era, but few people have ever heard her story.
That’s why her image is one of 13 diverse portraits recently added to a collection of paintings of the city’s wealthiest trade groups. Before the additions, the Portrait Gallery of the Golden Age, as it was known, was a sea of all white and mostly male faces. It resides in a wing of the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam that houses part of the Amsterdam Museum’s collection. These photographic portraits, created using contemporary models in period clothes and settings, are part of an exhibition called “Dutch Masters Revisited."[
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| “Elizabeth Samson” by Humberto Tan. The photograph is displayed in “Dutch Masters Revisited” at the Amsterdam Museum.Credit...Humberto Tan, via Amsterdam Museum |
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| The grand hall at the Hermitage Amsterdam, where the Amsterdam Museum’s Portrait Gallery of the 17th Century is on display. It was formerly called the Portrait Gallery of the Golden Age.Credit...Joel Frijhoff, via Amsterdam Museum |
