Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam reopens after 10 years

" ... The people who wore, used and possessed all this stuff also haunt the place, often turning up in the simplest guises. One case houses a small collection of woolly hats, many striped in vivid colours. The only other place I know where you can see anything like them are in paintings of fishermen and, perhaps, Dutch boers. But these are the hats worn by whaling crews in Spitsbergen in the 17th century, preserved beneath the ice, in such perfect condition that you’d expect to see them in a tray of beanies at your outerware shop of choice. So you look at the hats, you hear the sailors’ shouts, the creak of ice-trapped timber, you smell the blubber vats and you commune with your ancestry. Which may not be Fine Art but which is all the more enthrallingly potent for it."