Hi there, everyone. It's Jennifer, Art Curious host in your earbuds today with our short-form

Friday roundup of my favorite art history updates and news tidbits. This is Art Curious News this week,

and this gets you up to date on some of the latest goings-on in the realm of art history. Today is Friday, November 4th, 2022. And today's

news brief is a very Vermeer-centric one. Last week, I reported that the largest exhibition of works

by Johannes Vermeer, the largest ever, is going to be on view next year at the Reichs Museum in Amsterdam.

Out of about 35 known works of art that Vermeer completed during his lifetime, the Reichs

Museum will be showing at least 28, with the possibility, of course, that more loans or

additions will be announced as we get closer and closer to the show's opening date,

though we can't know for sure. So all of that is well and good, but just this week,

it was announced that there's a spot of controversy therein. Earlier this year, the National

Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., announced that one of their works of art, a painting called Girl with a Flute,

was being downgraded from a work by Vermeer to being the work of someone, quote, with a profound

understanding of Vermeer's techniques, unquote, as reported by Art News.

Now, let me say that this is big news in and of itself, even though it might not necessarily be seen as positive news necessarily for the National Gallery.

But this isn't altogether uncommon. Art attribution, as I've written about both in my book and then also shared on my podcast, is tricky, tricky business.

It's an act that requires a lot of research, a lot of work, and also a lot of best guesses. But what's fascinating about the news this

week is that the Rijks Museum is borrowing Girl with a Flute from the National Gallery for

that huge Vermeer exhibition, and they will be exhibiting the work

as a Vermeer, not a pupil of Vermeer or a follower of Vermeer or studio of Vermeer, which is how

the National Gallery itself currently showcases the work.

This is not usually the standard, I'd say, being a museum person myself. So typically,

you would defer to the lending institution's identification of the work of art that is under

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