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Frans van Hilten

I am a freelance cultural journalist. Because I think an independent cultural voice is important, I enjoy writing for this platform.

Greeks at Rijksmuseum of Antiquities, photo Mike Bink

Mere masterpieces at reopened National Museum of Antiquities

The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO) in Leiden reopens on Tuesday 15 December after a major renovation and asbestos remediation. The museum immediately unpacks with a completely revamped Classics department: Greeks, Romans and Etruscans. There are also three small temporary exhibitions. Anyone entering the hall of the museum will not immediately notice any difference: fortunately, the Egyptian Taffeta temple is still just standing on... 

Mrs Cornelys' scandalous salon

Mrs Cornelys' Entertainments. Under that remarkable title, baroque company New Dutch Academy presented a concert in a theatrical setting. The Hague's Korzo Theatre turned into a society evening. Visiting a much-discussed lady from 18th-century London. It was a feast for the eyes and ears. New Dutch Academy has a changing line-up in addition to some permanent members. The Academy keeps itself - the name... 

'Daphne' on the patio of museum Beelden aan Zee (author's photo)

Everything is temporary, however beautiful - exhibition Iris Le Rütte at Beelden aan Zee

Last spring, while looking at Catinka Kersten's newly installed sculpture on the patio of museum Beelden aan Zee, Iris Le Rütte's sculpture Daphne caught my eye. A woman who instead of a head and arms stretched branches to the sky. It is a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses: the nymph Daphne, on the... 

AUREUM by Medhi Walerski, still from trailer

Young choreographers triumph in NDT2's 'Shearing the Wolves'

In the wings of Nederlands Dans Theater, the new generation of dance makers is ready. Medhi Walerski and Johan Inger are both former dancers of the company and have previously created pieces there. In NDT2's Shearing the Wolves programme, they each surprise with a world premiere full of intense, pure dance. In comparison, an older work by house choreographers Sol Léon and... 

Rembrandt in the mirror

Selfies uit de Gouden Eeuw. Die ondertitel met een knipoog geeft het Mauritshuis zijn nieuwe tentoonstelling Hollandse zelfportretten mee. Het museum zoekt hiermee een nieuwe verbinding tussen de 17e eeuwse kunst en de wereld van nu. En die poging is geslaagd, mede dankzij het ingenieuze tentoonstellingsontwerp van Jelena Stefanovic van Studio OTW. Sinds de renovatie en uitbreiding van 2012-2014 beschikt… 

Inequality and exploitation: from Genesis to today

At the Gala van het Nederlands Theater, she won the Colombina 2015 for best female contributing role, in Genesis. From this week, Antoinette Jelgersma, actress with the Nationale Toneel, plays in Ronald Schimmelpfennig's The Golden Dragon. From biblical history to life anno now - but there are more similarities than you might think. Jelgersma sits relaxed 

Modern. Medieval. Mariken

OPERA2DAY presents the world premiere of Mariken in de tuin der lusten at the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague on 11 October. An opera with the collaboration of an impressive list of artists, including composer Calliope Tsoupaki, Asko|Schönberg and actress Hannah Hoekstra as Mariken. But will you achieve success with an opera, with modern-classical music moreover and Middle Dutch text? Director and creator Serge van Veggel... 

Rik Wouters, Autumn, 1913, 135 x 140 cm, Oil on canvas, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp ©Lukasart in Flanders

Belgian colour on Dutch cheeks - 7 reasons why you should visit 'Colour Unleashed' soon

Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong time. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in the period when modern art was born? Then I correct myself: no, there were many problems and uncertainties back then too. But the new exhibition Colour Unleashed at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag makes me hesitate again. Because the exhibited... 

Masses in the Kloosterkerk (photo Christiaan de Roo)

Mozart, Kortjakje and the princess

Last weekend 250 years ago, nine-year-old Mozart arrived in The Hague with his parents and sister Nannerl. He arrived on 11 September 1765 to perform at the stadholder court. Due to illness, the Mozarts ended up staying for nine months and the young composer wrote several works here. Harpsichordist and conductor Jörn Boysen organised the festival Mozart in The... 

Montecelio, M.C. Escher, March 1924, East Indian ink on paper, © The M.C. Escher Company BV, Baarn

Newly discovered and unique: unknown Escher on display in The Hague #escher

Museum Escher in het Paleis has acquired an unknown early work by M.C. Escher. The museum announced this today. In the print, a depiction of the Italian town of Montecelio, the famous graphic artist experimented with a variety of techniques. The museum is delighted. Because it's not every day you find an unknown but important Escher anymore. It must have been quite a marriage,... 

Sierk van Meeuwen, Terrorist (source: zomerexpo.nl)

'Also nice. A hot chick with a kalashnikov.' Amateurs and pros in Haags Gemeentemuseum

The annual Summer Expo at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag is open to submissions from amateurs. But in the end, as many as 70% of the entrants turn out to have attended an art school, and even 80% of the selected entries were made by professional artists. With two guests, I visit the Summer Exhibition. Museum visitor Rob van Berlo picks his favourites. Gallery owner Nena Milinkovic I ask the same,... 

Feeling the 3d scan (photo author)

Rembrandt expert in an hour thanks to the Mauritshuis

For eight years, the Mauritshuis researched and restored his painting 'Saul and David'. As a result, it can now be definitively attributed to Rembrandt. But the small exhibition 'Rembrandt? The Case of Saul and David' mainly shows how the museum collaborated with all kinds of different scientists and laboratories to unravel the numerous mysteries surrounding the canvas. As a visitor, you will be taken through the... 

MOMIX Botanica, photo Max Pucciariello

Jurassic Art! - 10 times art with dinosaurs

Twenty-two years after Jurassic Park the fourth instalment of the well-known dinosaur films enters Dutch cinemas on Thursday 11 June. In Jurassic World we see in 3D how the dreamed theme park with live dinosaurs is finally realised, and how things go grandly wrong when overambitious showmen start genetically manipulating dinosaurs. In each new volume, the plot is thinner, the special effects become more dominant and the scientific pretensions less so, but no one can deny that the Jurassic Park-films have revolutionised. Also in the arts.

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Advertising column Three Sisters

Chekhov's helpless, poetic creatures - three actresses on Three Sisters

Three Sisters by Chekhov directed by Theu Boermans is back with the Nationale Toneel. Two and a half years after its original performance, the play will play nine times exclusively at the Royal Theatre in The Hague. There is news about all three "sisters". Anniek Pheifer (Masja), Ariane Schluter (Olga) and Sallie Harmsen (Irina) talk about their careers and about Chekhov.... 

Vormidable: two Flemish visions of renewal sculpture

The annual major sculpture expo in The Hague in 2015 is called 'Vormidable'. In its own museum, on Lange Voorhout and at several satellite locations, Museum Beelden aan Zee shows how Flemish art experienced a true revival from the 1990s onwards. Panamarenko, De Bruyckere, Fabre, but also lesser-known names renewed sculpture - in two opposite ways. Guest curator Stef van... 

Solness - the National Theatre - Mark Rietman, Anna Raadsveld - photo Kurt Van der Elst

Ibsen in a bubble - Boermans' grippingly austere Solness

Een meisje staat te zwaaien en om haar heen daalt een regen van zeepbellen, zo veel dat het bijna lijkt of het meisje opstijgt. Ze staat te zwaaien en haar extase en vreugdetranen slaan langzaam om in diepe wanhoop en ongeloof. Wat ze ziet kan, mag niet waar zijn, want het vernietigt alles wat ze is – tot wat ze… 

Catinka Kersten and Dick van Broekhuizen look on at the placement (author's photo)

Catinka Kersten in Images by the Sea - one year after academy

Museum Beelden aan Zee placed a concrete sculpture by 26-year-old artist Catinka Kersten on the patio at the end of March: 'And everyone held their breath during that fraction of centuries'. It consists of five concrete human figures stacked on top of each other, which appear to be made of fabric. Kersten completed her studies at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague in 2013 with a series of hunting animals in plaster and cotton. The museum, with associated scientific institute and plaster library, is considered one of the figureheads of sculpture in the Netherlands. How did this museum come to choose such a young artist and what does inclusion in its collection mean for her?

De grote verhalen van Genesis: Johan Doesburgs afscheid bij het Nationale Toneel

Adam en Eva. Noach. Babel. Jozef. Een compleet Bijbelboek giet Johan Doesburg in zijn afscheidsvoorstelling bij het Nationale Toneel. ‘Genesis’ duurt inclusief pauzes 6 uur, telt 65 sprekende personages en speelt met de ruimte van het Scheveningse Zuiderstrandtheater. Maar de scheidend regisseur wil er vooral twee verhalen mee vertellen. In gesprek met Johan Doesburg en acteur Dries Vanhegen, wiens personage Jacob een bijzondere rol in het stuk vervult.

Nature conservation on canvas in Dordrecht and The Hague

The double exhibition 'Holland op z'n mooist - Op pad met de Haagse School' opens at the Dordrecht Museum on 5 April and at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag on 4 April. The two museums are joining forces with Natuurmonumenten to show the nature of the late 19th century alongside that of today. In two exhibitions (genre pieces in Dordrecht, landscapes in The Hague),... 

The Tenth of Arrows promo

De Tiende van Tijl is good, proves Podium Witteman

On this website in December 2014, I broke a lance for TV programmes like Maestro, which presented classical music as too easy in the eyes of some. Those same people are also unlikely to have a good word to say about The Tenth of Ten, in which comedian Tijl Beckand introduces classical music through spectacular stories, dramatic histories, often on location in... 

Anton Corbijn at the Gemeentemuseum (author photo)

Anton Corbijn in The Hague: Iconic portraits, dated musicians

In the halls of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Mark Rothko has made way for photographer Anton Corbijn. A bigger difference hardly seems conceivable, but an exhibition with lots of pop photographs fits seamlessly into the museum's mission to bring 20th-century avant-garde art, stresses director Benno Tempel. Corbijn, who celebrates his 60th birthday this year, will be honoured with a double exhibition; besides... 

Much attention to Ingres' comtesse

3 outdoor opportunities for art lovers thanks to The Frick Collection at The Mauritshuis

Ingres, Cimabue, Memling, Tiepolo, Goya, Van Eyck, Constable. Purely top names in art history and works by many of them hardly hang in Dutch museums. But now they do. The Mauritshuis in The Hague is showing no fewer than 36 works from the famous Frick Collection in New York from 5 February. And that museum has never before lent so many art treasures. Therefore, the Mauritshuis has... 

Samir Calixto, Paradise Lost (photo by Joris Jan Bos)

Opening CaDance: Milton's 'Paradise Lost' according to Samir Calixto

More than 10,000 lines of verse comprise Englishman John Milton's poem Paradise Lost (1667). It cannot be easy to capture that in an hour-long dance performance and yet that is what choreographer Samir Calixto set out to do. Earlier, the young Brazilian cut his teeth on Schubert's Winterreise and Vivaldi's Four Seasons. On Friday, he opened with Paradise Lost the... 

Björk - Vulnicura album cover

Björks Vulnicura: reis door de emoties van een gewond dier

Eigenlijk is het nog veel te vroeg voor een recensie van Vulnicura. Björks nieuwe album laat zich niet in een paar dagen of luisterbeurten doorgronden. Maar omdat wél direct hoorbaar is dat hier iets bijzonders gebeurt, doe ik toch een poging deze nieuwe ontwikkeling in Björks kunstenaarschap te duiden. Björk is een artiest van wie ik ieder album met bovengemiddelde… 

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