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VISUAL

Everything in museums, galleries, on roundabouts and village squares, and hanging over sofas. And Marina Abramovic

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We are real Holland Festival specialists by now. We go and see performances beforehand, interview makers, actors and walk around the halls, in the foyers, just about every day. We hear a lot, we see a lot and we share it here. Cultural journalism as it should be, in short. Cultural journalism that should also be there. And it totally succeeds if you take out a subscription. Then you get... 

In search of Carthage. Drawings by Elisa Pesapane at the National Museum of Antiquities

In the commission given to artist Elisa Pesapane by the National Museum of Antiquities, her passions came together: drawing, antiquity, research and portraiture. From today, twelve drawings about 'le solitaire des ruines': the military engineer Jean Emile Humbert, in search of the city of Carthage, are on display at the RMO. Artist Elisa Pesapane Portrait The Italian-Dutch artist Elisa Pesapane (b 1977)... 

Why young men (and the Gemeentemuseum) make me happy.

The other day, this einzelgänger joined a group event here in The Hague. For the first time. With buses full of local residents heading for the Gemeentemuseum. Wondering with which neighbours I would go to see art, experience again what a museum feels like after closing time and attend a workshop or lecture. For inspiration. It worked out. Experiencing What an awful lot of fun to run into neighbours at the museum,... 

Sheila Hicks, Escalade Beyond Chromatic Lands -2016-2017- Arsenal-End-wall

Venice Biennale emphasises soft forces in art

The 57th Venice Biennale brings the world together and the art world to Venice. This year, the biennial art event is bigger than ever. Here you will find out what is 'trending' in contemporary art. Everyone thinks something of this event and we live in a time when everything and everyone is held up to the yardstick: 'Have you been there?.... 

Your city's future hangs by a steel thread

Does your town suffer from vacancy? Is the city centre poorly accessible? Are you looking for a tourist attraction or a unique logo? A cable car solves all your problems. Your municipality can still benefit despite the great interest from all over the Netherlands in this new means of transport. But above all, don't listen to me, but to everyone before me. Clean and sustainable alternative In Groningen... 

New artists get place in Style Pavilion: 'They must be able to drill'

In the Style Year, events mainly look back at the art movement that began 100 years ago. Yet there are also contemporary initiatives that look ahead, such as in Amersfoort. In the Keistad, the Style Pavilion is being built from scaffolding material. Twenty contemporary, mostly young, visual artists will give their own interpretation to the outside of the pavilion. They draw inspiration from the building... 

Dutch trash artist on the hunt for litter in spotless #Aarhus2017

You can't help but grin at the sight of a cute little jellyfish consisting of a bottle and an orange net. A spray bottle with a well-placed cap becomes a penguin, or a goose. Even rolled-up hair, harvested from a washing machine, does not escape Adriaansche's universe: a family of flies called Musca capillus. It does something to the way you look. 'Where... 

View on the Acropolis and Partheon, Athens (photo author)

Documenta 14: You have 100 days to discover Athens

Every five years, the art world is turned upside down. Then it is time for the fourteenth Documenta. At that time, the German city of Kassel turns into a veritable Mecca for art connoisseurs and art lovers, snobs and connoisseurs. And, of course, tourists looking for that other Efteling. This year's Documenta has a sizeable Dutch contribution. But there is more: for the... 

Culture outside the Randstad: Amersfoort's struggle

Displaced paintings by Armando. Artists fleeing the city. A tinpot that brought financial disaster and summer festivals that attract tens of thousands of visitors every year. And you thought Amersfoort was boring? A footnote along the A1 motorway? Forget it. Let me tell you about this city struggling with its cultural identity. A story in eighteen impressions. Guilty landscape In his youth... 

Baudet's art vision blamed for old battle between Rotterdam and Leiden

For those who like to be around art, politics has become a bit more fun again, since 15 March. Since the 2017 elections, Thierry Baudet has been in the House of Representatives. Thierry Baudet knows a lot about art, he thinks, and we will come to know it, too. In fact, Thierry Baudet is the best thing about art these days... 

Museum Voorlinden: A cactus without spines

Joop van Caldenborgh, founder of Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, has commissioned a classical museum that builds on existing conventions about presenting art. The art should be central and the building does not matter, so to speak. Yet the design plays an important role. Architecture critic Tim de Boer dives deeper into the thoughts behind the building,... 

Bruce Nauman on vinyl: like being hit in the neck with a baseball bat

Bruce Nauman is considered one of the most influential artists of the moment. He creates work that crosses genre boundaries - as well as breaking down with them - in an exploration of body, language and performance that has now spanned 50 years. Nauman expresses his often provocative and invariably innovative ideas in a multitude of media and materials. As a result, his work is... 

Entrance to the Gemeentemuseum. Photo Studio Vollaerszwart

How the citydresser gives everything Mondrian colours, and why the museum is fine with that

On Piet Mondrian's birthday, 7 March, the municipality of The Hague offered its residents a colossal decorated cake. It is part of a very active campaign around 100 years of De Stijl. While the Gemeentemuseum is presenting three substantive Stijl exhibitions this year, The Hague is going all out with Stijl imitations and plastered shop windows. A contradiction? Less than it seems, because this citydressing... 

Ascent, Fiona Tan, video artwork of cinematic allure

Fiona Tan delivers a feature-length video artwork with Ascent

The video artwork 'Ascent' is one of Fiona Tan's most recent works. Ascent is a feature-length video artwork: 1 hour and 17 minutes[ref]A work resulting from a special commission from the Izu Photo Museum in Japan[/ref]. You may already be familiar with this artist's work[ref]The now 50-year-old Fiona Tan is "no ordinary Indian girl", born in Pekan... 

At Boijmans, pay special attention to Leonora Carrington (and go crazy for surrealism)

Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam hosts the largest exhibition in Europe of Surrealists. Famous names like Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Paul Delvaux and Roland Penrose. But also lesser-known gods like the outstanding Leonora Carrington and Francis Picabia. In 1970, the world-famous surrealist Salvador Dali visited the Boymans museum in person.... 

Art is not an exam you can fail. Art is a way of seeing

Op Art (optical art) is less well known than Pop Art. Until you see the works in question. There may be no Op Art stars of Andy Warhol status, but their creations directly resonate with images you know from art history. On Saturday 25 February, a major exhibition[hints]In collaboration with the Louisiana Museum in Denmark[/hints] opened at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam about these... 

Only mythical stories fascinate at art gallery KAdE

Why did I find the mythical stories about being an artist more interesting than the artworks I saw? I wondered this after visiting the exhibition GOED GEMAAKT (ode to the making process) at the Amersfoort art gallery KAdE. Only a single work of art touched me, while the stories about Daedelus, Pygmalion and the daughter of Butades fascinated me immensely.... 

Sex, aureoles and the art of Rebecca Linders

Rebecca Linders idolises sex. She places aureoles over sex situations in her new series of drawings, Icon Nection. Sex icons, in other words. This is how she sanctifies intimacy. Linders: 'I had to learn to see sex as sacred.' What does sex have to do with icons? 'Sex had always been off limits for me. Something you don't do, that you don't talk about. I come from a... 

German couple collected unique jewellery in Danish Design #Aarhus2017

Delicate petals, tough links, a denim collar. You can't dream it up or Danish designers have designed them in silver as jewellery. Thousand Jewels offers an overview of Danish design from the twentieth century. Among them are internationally renowned designers and silversmiths, such as Georg Jensen (not only jewellery but also silver tableware), Kaj Bojesen (not only silver but also... 

Gerrit Rietveld's Red and Blue Chair in original and later condition (source: commons.wikimedia.org)

The Rietveld chair was brown - 10 things you didn't know about De Stijl #MTDD

Something with straight lines and planes and primary colours. We all get that far with De Stijl. But did you know that there was also Style music and that a mechanical figure danced to that, er, Style? Let's get things straight before the Mondrian to Dutch Design exhibition season begins. 1. Mondrian was not the big man of De Stijl Piet... 

Group of visual artists flees Amersfoort

Dissatisfied with the city's art policy, visual artists are leaving Amersfoort. Not physically, but with their work. In the coming year, they will exhibit together in numerous places in the Netherlands. They largely leave their own hometown behind. They have little faith in the municipality's newly developed cultural vision. Why? You can read about that below. And also that their own... 

A museum is for everyone, with or without gin-tonics

Museums should be places where everyone feels welcome, argues art editor and curator-in-training Roxy Jongewaard. An argument for public and free museums: "A museum for everyone who can pay 17.50 in entrance fees is not a museum for everyone." In the coming year, I get to live out a personal dream: I will work as a curator in a major Dutch museum.... 

Gerard de Kleijn makes Museum Gouda more accessible

Gerard de Kleijn is leaving on 1 February after six years as director at Museum Gouda. The flamboyant, eloquent and erudite director leaves behind a financially and artistically healthy Museum for his successor Marc de Beyer. De Kleijn made the museum more accessible to Gouda residents and art lovers from outside the historic city. In 2016, the museum attracted around 40,000... 

Amsterdam has run out of things to do: now Stedelijk Museum topper gone too

Bart Rutten becomes the new artistic director of Utrecht's Centraal Museum Bart Who? Bart quite an important figure. Bart Rutten was the man behind some great blockbusters at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. That he is going to Utrecht after Malevich and Matisse says a lot about the good work of his predecessor Edwin Jacobs. It says even more... 

CCD Award 2017: cast your vote NOW!

The five nominees for the CCD Award 2017 are Hamlet by ZEP Theater Productions, Festival Mundial, Ongekend Bijzonder Festival 2016, Project Old Skool by Stichting Gebouw 52 and the Van Abbemuseum. The public can cast their votes from now until 18 January 2017 via this link. The jury will take the public vote into consideration. CCD Award 2017 The prize of... 

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