Schrijversportretten

Schrijversportretten (“author’s portraits”) is a catalogue of the permanent “madhouse” exhibition at the Literature Museum in Den Haag, The Netherlands. Both catalogue and exhibition show an – alphabetically ordered – pandemonium of painted portraits of writers in all possible styles and sizes.

From the back cover:

Unlike the United Kingdom, The Netherlands lack a National Portrait Gallery. But the Letterkundig Museum [as it was called in 2010] has initiated one. Alphabetically ordered by their author name, over 400 Dutch writers hang side by side, known and unknown. (…) The alphabetic order results in surprising combinations, as the usual art-historic viewpoint is completely ignored.

The catalogue is small in page size (18×14 cm) but makes a solid appearance due to its 448 pages and the in-your-face cover, designed by Karen Polder who picked Gerard Unger’s Swift for all text from cover to essay and page navigation.