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,...
Robbert Dijkgraaf, the exact scientist with the flux-de-bouche of a great orator, kicked off the traditional Paradiso debate on Sunday 30 August in an extremely cool Paradiso. The Amsterdam pop temple was packed with guests and press, and expectations were high: could the debate really become a conversation this time, instead of the now somewhat threadbare...
On Tuesday afternoon, 25 August, Hans van Beers (Eindhoven, 1941) passed away. He was an important figure in our cultural life, his curriculum is seemingly endless. Among other things, he was alderman of culture in Den Bosch, co-founder of Pinkpop, chairman of the Mondriaan Fund, interim director of the Stedelijk Museum, director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the VPRO and the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music, board member...
Olson Lamaj runs a gallery with three friends: from their own money and in their spare time. They have to because it is the only way to give young, contemporary Albanian artists a chance. Lamaj studied photography in Milan and fine art in Florence and now earns his money as a graphic designer. He speaks to me after working hours
How next for boards in the cultural sector? Supervisory boards are under considerable pressure following publications about possible failed supervision at Rotterdam's Wereldmuseum, Grand Theatre in Groningen and recently again from Rotterdam's Het Nieuwe Instituut. Previously, similar reports appeared about De Utrecht Games and the Groninger Museum, among others. In practically all cases, the cases involved a Council...
Europe's last cultural secret, is how Albania is also known. Mainly because the small Balkan country was shielded from the rest of Europe for a long time: until the communist totalitarian regime fell in 1991. How does such a change affect its culture? I become fascinated by this question during my holiday and speak to a number of people. Including our own ambassador, Dewi from the...
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 Expo. Museum visitor Rob van Berlo picks his favourites. Gallery owner Nena Milinkovic I ask the same,...
the atmosphere It is 30 degrees in Den Bosch. People with headphones on clap for something we, the passers-by, do not see. At a shopping centre, girls with masks roll on the ground. There is commotion everywhere. Festival Boulevard is in full swing and the whole city seems to join in. The terraces are full and the mood is high. I make my way...
From today, it is not Leeuwarden, Amsterdam, Utrecht or The Hague that is our country's cultural capital, but Den Bosch. For eleven days during Theatre Festival Boulevard, there will be more to see in that city than all to follow. Lots of new and unique work for Den Bosch, but also some performances that have already played in other places. Herewith our five recommendations. Have...
In this Van Gogh year, the painter has become part of a real group, an artist community, something he never managed to do during his lifetime. With the exhibition 'When I Give Myself, I give Myself', the Van Gogh Museum connects 23 contemporary artists to the lonely Van Gogh, who had hardly any friends during his life and sold only one painting. The...
Fifth batch of Masters graduating from Film Academy shows experimentation drive.
Last night Nazmiye Oral, together with a large group of Turkish colleagues, played the performance Niet Meer Zonder Jou for the third and, for now, last time. It is an intimate and overwhelming theatre production by Adelheid Roosen, Female Economy & Zina, co-produced by and performed during the Holland Festival at Broedplaats De Vlugt, far west in Amsterdam-Slotermeer. Tearing die Nazmiye Oral calls...
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...
Where minister Bussemaker tries to sell the same overall budget as "an extra investment of 18 million" with the new "cash shift" and municipalities like Amsterdam use the old-fashioned cheese slicer to make cuts, the municipality of Enschede uses the blunt axe. Despite fierce opposition and 27,000 signatures from concerned citizens, the city council agreed to an additional annual cut of 600,000 on the library and...
It is a niche sector in marketing, but cultural marketing is fast becoming mature. In recent years, cultural organisations have had to be creative and inventive with increasingly limited budgets. This often manifested itself in sensational marketing of performances, exhibitions and festivals. Not without results: these five marketing cases have bravely drawn attention last cultural season....
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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An old man strolls into the infirmary with a transistor radio. 'Where did you go blind?' the already present blind ask the newcomer. 'In a museum,' he replies. A moving conversation then unfolds about what was the last painting he saw, and the possibilities are projected onto the wafer-thin canvas that separates the audience from the sick room. This tot...
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...
Everything comes together in Enschede. Revenue models that appear to be based on air, but are defended to the hilt by administrators. Jubilant reports on rising museum visits, but smaller museums are going under. Aldermen acting out of cultural interests, but then playing residents against each other to make draconian decisions. All this to disguise the ruins of Rutte I. A quick recap:...
With its latest retrospective If We Ever Get To Heaven, EYE again convincingly and confidently presents itself as a museum that looks beyond film history. This was already evident in previous exhibitions such as Expanded Cinema, which showcased visual artists working at the intersection of film and art. Now William Kentridge has been given the honour of...
In the end, homo calculus - and who isn't, a "calculating man" - turns out to be primarily concerned with the monetary value of art objects, and only then - sometimes a long time later - with their beauty, artistic value or rarity. Every episode of the television programme Between Art and Kitsch demonstrates this. It also applies...
Libraries are mostly negative in the news. Branches have to close, members walk away and there is an ongoing debate about their right to exist. But in Amersfoort, the library is on the rise. Over the past year, visitor numbers have risen sharply. An advance confession: I am a nostalgic library visitor. As a little boy, I used to borrow The Shipboys of Bontekoe, Eagle's Eye and...
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?
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),...
With 'The oasis of Matisse', the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has put on a magnificent exhibition. Sixty years after there was last a major retrospective of Matisse in the Netherlands, his work is back on display in all its glory. So alongside 'Late Rembrandt' at the Rijksmuseum, there is another blockbuster in the capital. The thousands of visitors who attended the...
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