An exhibition showcasing Duch New York (circa 1690s) called “Dutch New York between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick,” will be on view through Jan. 3 at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan at 18 West 86th Street.
From yesterdays New York Times:
Scholars are not sure what Margrieta van Varick looked like, or even how she spelled her name, even though she ran a successful furnishings import business in Dutch New York. In her meager surviving paperwork from the 1690s the name variants include Margrita, Grietje and Magret. What is known is exactly how many ebony-framed mirrors, silver-headed walking sticks, muslin curtains and porcelain cups she wanted her four young children to inherit as she lay dying at her Flatbush home in 1695, age 46.
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The van Varicks lived somewhere nearby, and Margrieta probably ran her store out of the house. [..]
The exhibition research “has been maddeningly elusive,” said Deborah L. Krohn, a curator of the show. “But it’s been very seductive to speculate about what Margrieta thought about her things, and how she and her things occupied the same space only briefly, and why she was so careful to spell out which child should take what.”
