On the occasion of 80 years of freedom, the Amsterdam Museum invited visual artist duo Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen to create an exhibition of new work, taking the war history of Huis Willet-Holthuysen as the starting point. For this exhibition, Breure and Van Hulzen delved into the history of the Second World War and the role the monumental canal house played in it. They also drew on the Amsterdam Museum's collection. With Solo exhibition Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen: 'Friede auf Erden': art and war at Huis Willet-Holthuysen, on view from Friday 18 April 2025, Breure and Van Hulzen bring a hidden past to life through a new video and sound installation, combined with a presentation of photographs, drawings and paintings. The exhibition reveals how the house, best known as a historic canal house, also played a role in the Second World War.
Artist statement
Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen: "Responding to the war past is not an easy task both emotionally and artistically. Firstly, it is complicated because it concerns material that has become part of the core of Dutch identity over the last 80 years. At the same time, that identity is under tension because the Netherlands has become a multicultural society during the same period, with people from different backgrounds looking at the same history with different eyes. As an artist, how do you give space to this polyphony, without falling into cultural relativism? We appreciate the space the Amsterdam Museum gives us to explore this at Huis Willet-Holthuysen.“
Willet-Holthuysen house site of resistance
Huis Willet-Holthuysen is known as the imposing double mansion of the wealthy collector couple Abraham Willet (1825-1888) and Louise Willet-Holthuysen (1824-1895). A museum with beautiful interiors and extraordinary collections. Less well known is that the house acted as a vital hub in the resistance network at the time of World War II: the property provided a hiding place and meeting place for illegal resistance activities. The museum was closed during World War II but remained accessible to students of the Art History Institute and staff of the Institute for Social Research. Various resistance activities took place under this cover. For instance, people in hiding found a place here, the Council of Resistance met in the building and identity cards and voucher cards were forged.
'Friede auf Erden'
The exhibition by Sander Breure (1985, Leiderdorp) and Witte van Hulzen (1984, Bolsward) starts from the idea that "telling a history inevitably means changing that history". Breure and Van Hulzen create a multi-channel video and sound installation that exposes the mutability and polyphony of history. Through the corridors and rooms of the house museum, a layered story full of memories and perspectives unfolds.
Practical information
Exhibition: ' Solo exhibition Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen: 'Friede auf Erden'
Date: 18 April to 9 November 2025
Location: House Willet-Holthuysen, Amsterdam
Made possible by: Mondriaan Fund and the Vfonds
Structural support: Main benefactor Municipality of Amsterdam, Founder VriendenLoterij and Main Partner Education ELJA Foundation
Central to the exhibition
Central to the video and sound system is Weihnachtslegende 1943, a puppet theatre piece written by German-Jewish refugee Grete Weil (1906-1999), part of the Amsterdam Museum's collection. Weil is considered one of the greatest German post-war writers and an important witness to Jewish life during the emigration and deportation of Jews from the Netherlands.
Weihnachtslegende 1943, a Brechtian Christmas story about a pregnant woman escaping from the Hollandsche Schouwburg, was performed by and for people in hiding during the war. In Breure and Van Hulzen's interpretation, children play the scenes while the voices of older generations do the narration. A penetrating experience that shows how history is never fixed, but is told and shaped over and over again.
Photographs, paintings and drawings
In addition to a video and sound installation, the exhibition includes a slide show featuring work by the influential photographer Cas Oorthuys (1908-1975), with the subject of the resistance work at Huis Willet Holthuysen. Also on display are paintings from the Amsterdam Museum collection made during or just before World War II by Chris Beekman (1887-1964). Like Oorthuys, Beekman was part of the communist resistance. Finally, the exhibition includes a selection of drawings by Aat Breur-Hibma (1913-2002). Among other things, she portrayed fellow prisoners in the women's camp Ravensbrück.
Selection of drawings by Aat Breur-Hibma, fellow inmates in women's camp Ravensbrück, 1942-1945. Collection: Rijksmuseum, on loan from G.M. Breur and P.A. Breur
Social reflection
With this exhibition, Breure and Van Hulzen seek to answer the questions, "What does it mean to remember and reread acts of artists' resistance?" And, "How can we relate to this history of war at a time when atrocities and human rights violations are still taking place on a large scale?"
Audience programming
The public programme accompanying this exhibition offers more depth on the themes of the exhibition, including lectures on the wartime history of Huis Willet-Holthuysen and a Freedom Dinner on 5 May.
Series of interventions at House Willet-Holthuysen
Breure and Van Hulzen's exhibition can be seen at Amsterdam Museum-location Huis Willet-Holthuysen on the Herengracht in Amsterdam. With several interiors, including a nineteenth-century great hall and a symmetrical French baroque garden, and numerous impressive historical objects, the double mansion gives visitors a picture of life in an expensive house on Amsterdam's canal belt in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Amsterdam Museum regularly asks contemporary makers or collectives to take visitors through a new perspective on the historic canal house. Solo exhibition Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen: 'Friede auf Erden' is a fourth in this series of interventions at Huis Willet-Holthuysen. Previously, artist Maaike Schoorel, artist Anohni and ballroom house House of Vineyard at the Amsterdam Museum were given space to present their views on the history of the house and treat visitors to new refreshing insights.
Curator's view
Imara Limon, chief curator of Amsterdam Museum: "We are delighted that Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen are delving into the wartime history of Huis Willet-Holthuysen. In their artistic practice, the human condition is always strongly felt. With this new work, they reflect on the past and the present, mixing reality and fiction to create an exciting new narrative.“
About the artists
Sander Breure and Witte Van Hulzen have been working together since 2006. The artist duo is based in Amsterdam. Breure and Van Hulzen's oeuvre is interdisciplinary and includes performances, installations, video art, sculptures, photography and drawings. Their work has been shown in solo and group presentations at home and abroad, including exhibitions at Marres (Maastricht), the Contour 7 Biennale for the Moving Image (Mechelen), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam), MACBA (Barcelona) and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, as part of the Prix de Rome. Their work is included in the collections of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Centraal Museum Utrecht and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others.
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