Amsterdam is so beautiful

We had a friend over from Miami for a long weekend. It was good to see her again. Me and my man have stayed with her before when she was still living in Brooklyn. We took her all around town and had a great time. It got me acting all tourist like. Making pictures of everything that i see everyday, but not always taking the time out to realize just how pretty it looks.


Ooh.. i think the church on Dam square is looking so beautiful with the lighting and the red 'Indonesia' banners! Just had to make a picture. I haven't been to the exhibition yet. But it's high up on my to-do list. It runs till April so i must be able to find a good afternoon to go to the church.

From the Nieuwe Kerk website:
'Indonesia: the discovery of the past'. It consists of over 300 masterpieces from the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta and the National Museum of Ethnology (Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde) in Leiden. On display will be six large sculptures from the Singasari period (13th century), important gold finds and palace treasures from Sulawesi, Lombok and Bali, as well as unique ethnographica from West and East Indonesia, including New Guinea. Much of the material has never been exhibited before. The recently discovered Wonoboyo gold treasure also receives attention.
The exhibition presents the history of the collection and distribution of the Indonesian heritage brought together by the Batavian Society. This society's collection grew as a result of scientific and military expeditions, the passions of individual collectors such as governors and missionaries, and gifts from princes and sultans to the Dutch royal family or Indonesian rulers. The collection includes gold and other jewellery, buddha's, sculptures, krises and wayang puppets. From 1862 official policy was to divide collections between two institutions: the Museum Nasional in Jakarta and the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden. This is the first time that the collections have been brought back together again, for an exhibition in Jakarta (opening on 15 August) and then at The Nieuwe Kerk.
In total some 330 objects will be on view, 160 from Indonesia and 170 from the Netherlands, which are both archaeological and anthropological. The two museums in Leiden and Jakarta have the two largest and finest collections of the Indonesian heritage in the world. In this exhibition these collections will be brought together for the first time. After the shared colonial past, in which the collection was assembled but also divided between the two museums, the exhibition now puts the accent on the new cooperation and connection between Indonesia and the Netherlands as equal partners.