Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents 2018 programme

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is proud to present the highlights of this year’s programme. With no fewer than twenty exhibitions, 2018 promises to be a multifaceted and inspiring year in the museum. In 2019, the museum building will close for a large-scale renovation but Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will continue its activities elsewhere in the city.

Babel – Old Masters Back From Japan 3 Feb - 21 May 2018

Art in the Low Countries underwent an astonishing development between 1450 and 1570. Hieronymus Bosch ushered in this age of innovation with loose brushwork and an unparalleled imagination, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder brought it to a close with his extraordinarily detailed painting, ‘The Tower of Babel’. In 2017, Bruegel’s painting was exhibited in Japan alongside ninety other masterpieces from the museum’s collection. Some 660,000 Japanese visitors viewed the tower as a real historical structure, built by an army of craftsmen and the most advanced technology in the Scheldt delta near Antwerp. The exhibition ‘Babel – Old Masters Back From Japan’ shows that the Japanese view expands and enriches our own perspective.

Rubens – Master of the Oil Sketch 8 Sept 2018 - 13 Jan 2019

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and the Prado in Madrid both have unique collections of oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen 1577 – Antwerp 1640). For many years, both museums have wanted to bring together the best works from each collection, supplemented with masterpieces from other collections, to create a unique survey of the artist’s work in this medium. This wish will be fulfilled in the autumn of 2018 with the exhibition Rubens: Master of the Oil Sketch in the museums’ 1500 m2 Bodon Galleries. Loans will come from the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemiszsa in Madrid. The cooperation of these museums allows us to show Rubens’ mastery in its full glory. The selection of oil sketches comes from the whole of Rubens’ career and shows the diversity and genius of this great master.

XL ART – Large-Format Works Since the 1950s 10 Feb – 29 April 2018

Paintings that take up an entire wall, sculptures and installations that fill whole galleries: today extremely large artworks are quite normal. But in in 1935, when Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen opened, such large artworks were rare and so the design of the building did not take them into account. The exhibition ‘XL Art’ brings together fifty works in the museum’s Bodon Galleries, built in 1972. Guest curator Carel Blotkamp has made a varied selection from the museum’s collection, including ‘Driftwood Circle’ by Richard Long, ‘Notung’ by Anselm Kiefer and ‘D’red Dwarf, B’lack Hole’ by Jim Shaw. The enormous works, some of them as large as 5 x 10 metres, are rarely exhibited. But that’s about to change.

GELATIN 19 May – 12 Aug 2018

This summer, the Viennese art collective Gelatin is taking over the museum’s Bodon Galleries. Tobias Urban, Wolfgang Gantner, Florian Reither and Ali Jank are known for creating sensational situations in which people interact with each other. Through their performances and installations, they attempt to stimulate the senses and break through the daily routine. Gelatin has made a human birthday cake and presented a 50-metre-long toy rabbit in the Italian mountains. In Rotterdam, they will encourage visitors to lose themselves in an imaginary environment in order to rediscover the innocence of childhood.

Breathing Colour – Hella Jongerius 9 June – 23 Sept 2018

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is the place for design. This summer, the museum shows the work of one of the Netherlands’ most important designers: Hella Jongerius. For some years, Jongerius has been researching the spatial qualities of colour: what happens to colour when it is applied to objects? Her insights are informing the use of colour in industry today. In the exhibition ‘Breathing Colour’, Jongerius will allow visitors to experience colour in a new way, using objects from the museum’s collection. In Rotterdam, Jongerius will reveal how these colours translate into sensory experience. The exhibition was previously shown at the Design Museum in London.

Boijmans in the War – Disputed Past 13 October 2018 – 13 January 2019

This autumn, following detailed research into the provenance of works in the museum’s collection, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will examine its own history during and immediately following the Second World War. A multifaceted exhibition and a new publication in the ‘Boijmans Studies’ series will examine the wartime activities of Museum Boymans, as it was then known, paying particular attention to the role of the museum’s director, Dirk Hannema, and the circle of collectors and patrons around the museum. Following the devastating bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940, Hannema emerged as a defender of the city’s cultural heritage and a champion of contemporary art in the city. Under his leadership, the museum even managed to acquire countless artworks during these difficult years and organise a series of well-attended exhibitions. An ambitious museum director, Hannema enthusiastically adapted to the new occupying regime, which resulted in his being dismissed following the Liberation as a collaborator.

Also on view at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 2018

The Collection as Time Machine all year

Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (The Collection as Time Machine) 27 Jan – 29 Apr 2018

Charlotte Schleiffert (The Collection as Time Machine) 27 Jan – 29 Apr 2018

Sensory Spaces 13: Anne Hardy 10 Feb - 27 May 2018

Joost Conijn: Good Evening to the People Living in the Camp 10 Feb - 7 May 2018

Tomas Rajlich 10 Feb - 27 May 2018

Geert Lap: Perfect Simplicity 10 Feb 2018 – 13 Jan 2019

Sculpture After 1980 from the Collection 19 May 2018 – 13 Jan 2019

Sensory Spaces 14 – Kemang Wa Lehulere 9 June – 30 Sept

Bertjan Pot 9 June – 23 Sept 2018 Anima Mundi 9 June – 23 Sept 2018

Sensory Spaces 15 13 Oct 2018 – 13 Jan 2019

Boijmans in the War – Disputed Past 13 Oct 2018– 13 Jan 2019

Marten Hendrix 13 Oct 2018 – 13 Jan 2019