The culture of the Dutch Golden Age, in all its richness, cannot be fully understood but in its confrontation and exchange with contemporary cultures, in Europe and beyond, and its dynamic reception and consecutive transformation elsewhere and in later times. Whereas Horst Gerson’s ground breaking Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts (1942) concentrated mainly on Dutch painting and took its intrinsic quality as a starting point for further consideration, this working group is also interested in inter- and transcultural processes that have shaped and reshaped the culture of the Dutch Golden Age, and its image.

The aim of the present working group is, firstly, to explore the cultural transfer to and from the Dutch Republic during the Golden Age. This concerns both the world of learning, books, art works and other artefacts, and the cultural exchange between the Netherlands and other European and non-European countries and cultures in a broader sense. The second aim of the working group is to study processes of critical reflection on and the reception of the culture of the Dutch Golden Age, in its own period and in later times. This involves different aspects of critique, cultural appropriation, musealisation, canonization and commodification of the Dutch Golden Age in its aftermath in an ever changing cultural context.