The Rijksmuseum's 2023 Vermeer exhibition, widely considered the most successful show of the century, drew 650,000 visitors and assembled 28 of the artist's 37 known paintings. A new book, *Closer to Vermeer: New Research on the Painter and his Art*, reveals behind-the-scenes details: the initial plan for a broader thematic show was abandoned in favor of a focused Vermeer-only presentation; nine paintings could not be borrowed, including *The Concert* (stolen in 1990) and *The Astronomer* (on loan to Louvre Abu Dhabi); the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum refused to lend *Girl with a Wine Glass*, even rejecting an offer of buses for schoolchildren. The book also discloses that the Dutch king and queen visited multiple times during regular hours, that a quarter of visitors felt context was missing, and that over 3,500 complaints were filed about photography. The most expensive resold ticket on eBay reached $2,724.
This matters because the exhibition set a new benchmark for blockbuster museum shows, demonstrating both the immense public appetite for Old Masters and the logistical and diplomatic challenges of securing loans. The book's candid account—including visitor feedback, crowd management statistics, and the revelation of compositional changes detected through imaging—offers rare transparency about how such landmark exhibitions are organized and perceived. It also highlights tensions between accessibility (schoolchildren denied a loan) and exclusivity (scalped tickets at extreme prices), raising questions about equity in cultural access.