Operation Night Watch: Saving Rembrandt in Public

In 2019 Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum launched 'Operation Night Watch', the largest research and restoration project ever undertaken on Rembrandt's monumental masterpiece 'The Night Watch' (1642).

Rather than hide the work away, conservators built a great glass chamber around the painting and carried out their investigations in full view of visitors, with the entire process streamed online.

High-resolution scans revealed astonishing new details — even a lost sketch beneath the surface. It was conservation as public theatre, letting the world watch a giant of art history being cared for, brushstroke by brushstroke.

Image: “La ronda de noche, por Rembrandt van Rijn” — Rembrandt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.