“God in the Netherlands” is the title of a photographic exhibition in the museum of the convent of St. Catherine in Utrecht. Inaugurated on Saturday 10 June, it will run until 10 October in the recently refurbished museum, re-opened after two years of work. According to Guus van den Hout, director of the museum, the most important in Holland for Christian art and culture, the aim is to present “a many-sided and original image of how Christians experience their own faith today”. The works on display include contemporary representations of Christian symbols such as the cross and portraits of exponents of Christianity. To these are added representations of contemporary church groups in the country and modern variations of the ancient religious confraternities painted by great Dutch masters of the past such as Rembrandt and Franz Hals. Photographs of modern churches are interspersed with snapshots of Christian life between baptism and death. The exhibition, a collaborative venture with the Dutch Christian daily “Trouw” (“faithful”) and the Evangelical Tv channel “Ikon”, also includes photographs that commemorate more recent events such as WYD with Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 and the controversial closure of churches in the Netherlands. As an appendix to the exhibition, a series of contemporary photographs of the collection of old master paintings in the museum with the title “Biblical women in art” presents 68 works portraying women in the Bible, from Eve and Esther to Mary and the Magdalene.
