Everything in museums, galleries, on roundabouts and village squares, and hanging over sofas. And Marina Abramovic
There is quite a stir among mostly people of certain (white) colour and age about a documentary now playing in movie houses. In White Balls on Walls, maker Sarah Vos shows how the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has to get used to a new era in which old self-evidences are shaking to their foundations. The uproar revolves mainly around the artworks created by established...
The Dutch government distrusts citizens. And that stands in the way of a healthy art sector. This emerged on 17 January during a well-attended symposium at Amsterdam's Veem House. The occasion was the essay published in book form by Renée Steenbergen, who also published articles on this site. At the event, co-organised by Veem and Platform Beeldende Kunst, many makers were...
Scored a new bullshit bingo card, today. 'Art must no longer tingle, I quit'. Big headline in a quality newspaper, with below it the terrible story of gallery owner Jeanette Dekeukeleires of Gallery Art Kitchen. The 60-year-old says she is quitting her job because nothing more is allowed. (Read the story here) For instance, she received complaints from young people about the famous PSP poster with that naked woman....
Dresses made from Moroccan embroidery appliques and patchwork couture from upcycled designer fabrics. In recent years, Amsterdam-based fashion designers Karim Adduchi and Tess van Zalinge gained a lot of name recognition with their designs inspired by historical and regional handwork techniques. With sustainable collections like 'Natural' (Van Zalinge, 2022) and community projects like the 'Social [Distancing] Fabric' (Adduchi and The World Makers, 2021), both fashion designers offer...
The website where the Dutch umbrella organisation of museums, the Museum Association, keeps track of audience and number of people employed by its members was unreachable today. Perhaps that is because today the leading website Artnet also came out with revealing figures on the arts sector in the US. The report, titled The Burns Halperin Report, includes an overview of the...
Why is the largest retrospective on Italian designer Gianni Versace yet on show in Groningen? "Why not?" jokes Andreas Blühm, general director of the Groninger Museum. Indeed, it seems like a bizarre choice, but if you look a little closer, you will discover a few commonalities between the museum in the down-to-earth north and the maximalism of Gianni Versace, who on 2...
The Amsterdam Museum has acquired the work Woman on top (2022) by artist Aukje Dekker. The work, which Dekker uses to highlight the fact that Femke Halsema is Amsterdam's first female mayor, was officially unveiled on Tuesday in Mayor Halsema's office at City Hall. The work Woman on top (2022) by Aukje Dekker (visual artist, co-founder Sociëteit Sexyland) consists...
'See Naples and then die' were Goethe's famous words. If the German philosopher was as surrounded by beauty as I was during the new exhibition Dying in Beauty - The World of Pompeii and Herculaneum, I can understand his statement. For the Drents Museum, it is a peculiar choice: an exhibition on an already much-discussed period and society....
Anyone who sees anything other than irony in the work of the painter Rein Dool, completely unknown to me until now (as the painter also described it in an item on TV), has not been paying close attention in literature and art history lectures. Rein Dool painted a portrait of the then Board of Governors of Leiden University in 1974. We see...
Thousands of Dutch people have memories of a time spent in AZCs across the country, but there is no physical archive of this part of Dutch heritage. How can people with a refugee background remember their first place of residence in the Netherlands if there are no longer any traces of this place? How can we reflect on and dwell on...
A temperature record will be broken in the Netherlands on 28 October. Yet another, and it is indeed incomprehensible that on this day people still book a plane for a weekend in Barcelona. It is unfortunately also incomprehensible that on this 27th October 2022, a young man sticks his head next to the head of The Girl with the...
After international premieres in Lugano (Switzerland) and recently as the opening of the Romaeuropa festival in Italy, We Want it All can now be seen at the 5th edition of the ICK-Fest at Meervaart theatre. On Saturday 29 October | 21.00h, We Want it All will have its Dutch premiere during the festival. WE WANT IT ALL In a festive...
One might, when visiting the Venice Arte Biennale 2022, immediately shout 'woke' or 'wokism'. It's not that difficult, since the curator's choices emphasise female and non-Western artists.1 But I would find that too easy and ultimately unjustified. When you try to look fresh - forgetting all the reflections beforehand - it falls...
Framer Framed presents To those who have no time to play, Amsterdam-based artist Gluklya's (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya) largest solo exhibition to date, curated by Charles Esche. The artist develops her work with numerous others, including Kyrgyz textile workers, newcomers, musicians and writers. The exhibition includes four objects in space, each with...
On Friday 4 November, ROUW, the latest work by theatre-maker Marte Boneschansker, will premiere at Plein Theater in Amsterdam-Oost. ROUW is a walk along places of loss. With headphones on, you follow a carefully mapped out route through the neighbourhood to listen to stories of mourning that correspond to the locations in question. ROUW is about loss. About that...
Mountains and Molehills is the name of the exhibition EYE has dedicated to Fiona Tan. A video artist who often works with archive footage. From EYE's image bank came the raw material for Footsteps: a personal document and also a look back at the Netherlands as we rarely see it.
Two museums for the price of one. With a Mona Lisa in the making. 20 km from the Dutch border. Which is more beautiful? The building or the collection? Last weekend, Antwerp's Royal Museum of Fine Arts reopened after no less than 11 years. And that resonates far beyond the port city. I walk inside with a Danish art historian,...
Artist Monika Dahlberg has been commissioned by Framer Framed to create two sculptures that will have a permanent place at the entrance of the Framer Framed building. On Thursday 29 September, at 15:45, the work, titled Gatekeepers will be unveiled by Arts and Culture alderman Touria Meliani and district councilor Oost and art and culture portfolio holder Jan-Bert Vroege. During the opening...
"Over the past two-and-a-half years, I have started making choices. Where ten years ago I thought of going into life as a dance teacher, now the question is: do I really want to? What makes me happy, what do I want to share with the people around me?" For Lotte Willemsma, the first two years of the Corona pandemic were...
For her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, Peruvian artist Andrea Canepa (Lima, 1980) has de Appel's Aula space at her disposal as the venue for her ongoing investigation into the organisation of the physical and social structures, or organisational systems, that shape our daily lives. Canepa shows that although the spatial and architectural parameters of these organisational systems may seem clearly marked,...
Since March 2022, the main location of the Amsterdam Museum on Kalverstraat has been closed due to a large-scale renovation of the museum building, the former civilian orphanage. In the new temporary main location of the Amsterdam Museum on the Amstel (Amstel 51, Hermitage building), the museum will show a new permanent collection presentation Panorama Amsterdam and three changing exhibitions since March 2021. In...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: providence for artists. The office at Noordeinde in The Hague. At the meeting table, all board members had a fixed place. At that spot was a packet of cigarettes of the right brand ready for everyone. The meetings started at the stroke of two o'clock. Around half past...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: media art. Aan het Haagse Spui It were tough negotiations. The battle for the meter cupboard symbolised that. The chairman of the Hague Filmhuis, a former alderman, went hard at it. And the board of the World Wide Video Centre & Festival...
Chamber of Commerce donates 'Factory Girls on the Prinsengracht' from 1894 The Amsterdam Museum's collection is being expanded with a special donation. The Chamber of Commerce donated the museum the painting 'Factory Girls on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam' (c. 1894) by the famous Amsterdam impressionist Isaac Israels. Israels' painting hung for many years in the meeting room of the General Administration
"Miss, please give me the minister!". Henk Vonhoff's voice sounded as commanding as it was eloquent as he addressed his secretary over the intercom. Vonhoff was commissioner of the Queen in Groningen, but also chairman of the supervisory committee of the Groningen State University of Applied Sciences, the only college still directly under the minister. We, faculty directors, were at... for the umpteenth time.
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