Aalmoezeniersweeshuis te Amsterdam 1844

Curator: This engraving from 1844 by Johannes Hilverdink shows the Aalmoezeniersweeshuis, an Amsterdam orphanage. It's rendered in such precise detail. What are your initial impressions? Editor: Stark! Almost bureaucratic in its clarity. Rows and rows of windows… It feels impersonal, doesn’t it? But the smoke rising from the chimneys adds a touch of melancholic romance. Curator: Romanticism with a firm emphasis on the realities of the city, I think. Note how Hilverdink used the linear technique of engraving to describe every brick, every face along the canal. Editor: Faces, yes! They are like small dashes but seem like real people... I like the boats! Do you know what the building represents today? It makes me think about the circulation of the prints themselves, as a sort of democratic medium… Curator: Well, the building itself no longer functions as an orphanage, and I find myself focused on what this engraving tells us about 19th-century Dutch society, from the materials employed in the making of this print, to its accessibility for consumption by a wider audience through printed multiples. Editor: Thinking about distribution… It gives everyone a little piece of Amsterdam in their homes, and maybe makes them feel they know something more intimately. What's more magical than seeing into other worlds from so far away. I wonder where one would've hung it in their house... Curator: Perhaps in a parlor as a symbol of civic pride? Or a reminder of societal obligations? Editor: Or, a whisper of what’s beyond those endless rows of windows… What does being inside this building represent! Curator: Right! So, an object laden with contradictions—precision and mystery. Editor: Exactly. A story etched in ink!