Book Launch: Willem de Rooij – Dirk Valkenburg

We warmly invite you to the book launch of Dirk Valkenburg. During the evening at Hartwig Proxy in Amsterdam, artist Willem de Rooij and historian Karwan Fatah-Black will be in conversation with Zippora Elders Tahalele (Director of the Nederlands Fotomuseum). The book is envisioned as a platform for a plurality of voices, and several contributing authors will also join the discussion, offering a real-time, embodied impression of the book’s multi-voiced structure. The evening is organised by Centraal Museum Utrecht and Hartwig Art Foundation.

Workings of the ‘white gaze’

Dirk Valkenburg (1675–1721) painted early depictions of Indigenous and enslaved people on Surinamese sugar plantations, alongside hunting still lifes and portraits of patrons whose wealth derived from colonial trade and slavery. Across these genres, his work reveals the workings of the ‘white gaze.’

Edited by Willem de Rooij and Karwan Fatah-Black, and developed with the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History, this volume combines the first catalogue raisonné with fifteen newly commissioned essays by leading international scholars. Conceived as a pendant to De Rooij’s installation Valkenburg at Centraal Museum Utrecht (2025-26), it situates Valkenburg’s oeuvre within interdisciplinary and transcultural perspectives on colonial visual culture.

Book your place

Register for the event here: https://form.typeform.com/to/XKyaYOeF

Practical information

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Drinks and light bites will be served before and after the book launch.

The book is published by Amsterdam University Pressand will be available for purchase during the event for €60 instead of €75.

Hartwig Proxy is a testing ground and designed as a meeting place for the local community and the city in the years leading up to the opening of the Hartwig Museum.

Willem de Rooij – Valkenburg is a partner project of Hartwig Art Foundation.

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Image: Dirk Valkenburg. Study of Cashews, Maracujas, a Tropical Chicken Snake and an Ameiva Lizard from Suriname (detail). 1706-1708,Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 48.5 cm. Quimper, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper