The first noticeable thing about the exhibition "Vermeer and Rembrandt: the Masters of the 17th Century Dutch Golden Age" at the Mori Arts Center Gallery is the juxtaposition of the names. Vermeer's name comes before that of Rembrandt, marking him as the leading Dutch artist as far as the modern art public are concerned.
The second thing I observed is that most of the pictures are being exhibited at a much greater height above sea level than they perhaps are used to — on the 52nd floor of the Mori Building — something that, interestingly enough, helped evoke the famously low-lying country from which this art originated.
Despite the less than "old masterly" setting of a modern high-rise building in central Tokyo, the Mori Art Center Gallery has done a good job of darkening its walls and creating a suitably somber atmosphere for this group of paintings sourced from New York's Metropolitan Museum, London's National Gallery and Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum.