Between 6 March and 22 August 2010, the Centraal Museum presents the exhibition Heads by Kiki Lamers. It has been over ten years since a retrospective of the work of artist Kiki Lamers was on display in a Dutch museum. At the beginning of this year Kiki Lamers was awarded the Jordaan-van Heek prize for Dutch painting. Besides the work of Lamers, the exhibition also features a selection of the works of Pyke Koch (1901-1991) from the museum’s own collection. The Centraal Museum invites the audience to create connections between its own collection and the work of the artist invited. The exhibition Heads is a joint initiative of the Institut Néerlandais and the Centraal Museum.

On 5 July, Utrecht Dreams of Rome, a newly appointed semi-permanent presentation of the collection of Old Masters, opens at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht. This new presentation of world-class masterpieces shows how Utrecht’s 16th-century painters were inspired by their Italian counterparts – a process that eventually led to the rise of 17th-century Dutch Masters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Frans Hals.
Long before Dutch painting blossomed in towns such as Amsterdam and Haarlem, Utrecht was the supreme centre for painting in the Northern Netherlands. Utrecht Dreams of Rome traces the development of this unique tradition.