Making art about the experience

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

I stare at the collection of hangars and ropes with confusion. This is supposedly the coat rack for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam but I can’t seem to work it out. It’s not until one of the museum staff comes over and explains it that it starts to make a bit of sense. You need to pull on a rope in the central area to make a hangar somewhere else come down. Once you’ve put your coat on, you can pull it back up with the rope and then lock it into place, your coat dangling metres above the ground.

If it sounds unnecessarily complicated, it is. But that’s intentional. This isn’t an ordinary museum and the idea is to get you thinking and interacting before you’ve even walked through to the main galleries.

The collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen first started in 1849, which makes it one of the oldest museums in The Netherlands. It’s been housed in its current building since 1935, which has been extended several times in the intervening decades. But age is something that has enlivened the space, rather than burdened it. The museum shows how everyday objects have changed over the past eight hundred years and this gives it a dynamic contemporary feel.

This is one of the most interesting museums and art galleries I have ever been to. As a visitor, you engage with the space and are constantly surprised and amused. Modern art is melded with old classics and there’s a fluid feel to the experience of exploring the exhibits.

To give you a better idea of what I mean, I thought it would be easiest if I share some examples of what the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen offers.

Let Your Hair Down (Pipilotti Rist, 2009)

The museum is designed so you can go to this artwork first. It’s a huge net suspended over a staircase and you can lie there with pillows and watch videos projected onto the wall. This idea is that you float in the air, relax, forget the world outside and prepare your brain for the rest of the exhibitions.

Infinity Mirror Room (Yayoi Kusama, 1965)

You become part of the artwork inside this small mirrored room because your body leads out in perpetuity and becomes part of the distant landscape. It was made by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama in 1965 and was part of her obsession with dots and phalluses.

Red Landscape (Tanja Smeets, 2013)
Black Sun (Tanja Smeets, 2013)

These two works by Tanja Smeets are part of an installation that is on temporary display at the museum. She combines everyday objects with ceramics to produce an organic-looking effect. The works are supposed to look like the objects are growing and infiltrating their environment.

Flames Maquiladora (Carlos Amorales, 2003)

This interactive installation by a Mexican artist is inspired by factories established in Mexico to take advantage of cheap labour. You can actually have a go at making these shoes yourself. There’s a twist, though. If you do that then you are becoming cheap labour for the artwork itself.

Crying boy on box

I have failed you here, I’m sorry, because I didn’t write down the name of this artwork and I can’t find it online anywhere. If you know, please drop me a note, because it was a great piece. It sits at the top of a set of stairs on the way to some old paintings and for quite a few seconds I though the child was real. It’s extremely lifelike and really draws you in.

The Tower of Babel (Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1570)

This is probably the most famous painting at the museum and was donated in 1958. It shows the biblical Tower of Babel being constructed and if you look closely there are more than a thousand little people doing different activities. It’s also one of the most valuable works at the museum, estimated to be worth about 80 million euros.

Untitled (Maurizio Cattelan, 2002)

The museum commissioned Maurizio Cattelan to produce this work and he shocked them with his suggestion to cut a hole in the floor – but they agreed. It’s a self portrait that is supposed to show the relationship between the artworks and those looking at them.

Baroque Egg with Bow (Jeff Koons, 1994-2008)

This enormous egg weighs 900 kilograms and is about the size of a single bed. It is suppose to represent birth and fertility, which are common in the artist’s work. It took Jeff Koons 14 years to make a total of ten eggs and it’s said that he almost went bankrupt during the process.

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Time Travel Turtle was a guest of Rotterdam Marketing but the opinions, over-written descriptions and bad jokes are his own.