The Hague, 17 December 2024 – Next year, the museum Beelden aan Zee offers an ambitious exhibition program again, featuring both big names from art history and innovative, multidisciplinary artists. In March, the exhibition Ana Oosting – Breaking Waves by the Dutch artist and neurobiologist Ana Oosting opens, where art and science come together. Her new installation, consisting of ten large, floating creatures, is inspired by the wave patterns of the North Sea. In June, the international exhibition Ryan Gander X Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux opens. Visitors will see a dialogue between the iconic sculpture Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans by Edgar Degas and the contemporary reinterpretations by British artist Ryan Gander, who frees the ballerina from her pedestal. His playful ballerinas, never shown together before, challenge us to think about how we experience art over time. In the other museum halls, exhibitions by Emo Verkerk, Khaled Dawwa, Tania Kovats, and Erwin de Vries will take place throughout the year. www.beeldenaanzee.nl
Main Hall Program
Ana Oosting - Breaking Waves
14 March to 9 June 2025
Next spring, museum Beelden aan Zee presents the first solo museum exhibition of Ana Oosting (1985). Oosting is not only an artist but also a neurobiologist. This unique combination characterizes the core of her work. She views the world through the lens of both art and science. Her research-based and site-specific installations invite us to explore non-human perspectives. They have an immersive character and encourage the viewer to actively connect with the work.
Especially for the museum, Ana Oosting creates a site-specific installation of ten large creatures that seem to float effortlessly through the air. The work is based on the earlier work Changing the Gaussian Curvature. Through hyper-precise folding, the artist brings the creatures to life, embodying the idea that even non-living matter can act, rather than merely being subjected to human will. In the space, an enchanting sea view unfolds that may seem familiar. This familiarity is no coincidence. Ana Oosting collaborated with scientists to mimic the wave patterns of the nearby North Sea. This is accompanied by a haunting melody - which might remind one of the song of a whale, the whisper of the coastal wind, or the thundering sound of waves crashing against the shore. Curator: Louise Bjeldbak Henriksen.
Ryan Gander X Edgar Degas - Pas de Deux
20 June 2025 to 4 January 2026
From June, museum Beelden aan Zee presents an exhibition that brings the work of British visual artist Ryan Gander (1976) and French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917) into dialogue. Since 2008, Gander has been working on a conceptual series in which he reinterprets the world-famous sculpture Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (1880-1881) by Degas and places it in a contemporary context. With his sculptures, Gander frees Degas' fourteen-year-old dancer from her pedestal and places her in different scenarios. The exhibition at Beelden aan Zee shows Gander's series of 22 ballerinas for the first time, moreover, in direct connection with Degas' famous sculpture.
Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans marks the transition from classical to modern sculpture. With the image of the young ballerina in a modest and realistic pose, the French master not only captured the beauty of ballet life but also the tension between the discipline of ballet and the vulnerability of youth. More than a century later, Ryan Gander reflects on Degas' work with a series of ballerina images in unexpected or everyday situations, with the most poetic titles. His reinterpretations raise questions about the idealization of the ballerina and the role of art in presenting reality versus fiction. Brigitte Bloksma, director of museum Beelden aan Zee and curator of the exhibition, emphasizes: "The relationship between Degas' original work and Gander's approach offers a fascinating reflection on the perception of the ballerina and the subtle boundaries between art and everyday life. It shows how artists over time deal with themes such as movement, youth, and vulnerability.”
Ryan Gander X Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux is Ryan Gander's first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. The exhibition takes place thanks to a collaboration with public and private collections worldwide that lend their sculpture by Ryan Gander, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which provides the special loan of Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (1880 – 1881/1922) by Degas. Museum Beelden aan Zee has commissioned Ryan Gander to create a new ballerina, Waiting for timefall, or Living in a time where everything is possible, but nothing can happen, the last work in his series. A publication will accompany the exhibition, including a contribution from the artist.
Cabinet/Sea Room Program
Emo Verkerk
14 March to 9 June 2025
Painter, draftsman, and sculptor Emo Verkerk (Amsterdam, 1955) is one of the most important Dutch artists of recent decades. He became especially known for his painted portraits of writers, philosophers, musicians, and visual artists he admired. Besides reading biographies, a photo often formed the starting point, along with the impressions and associations it evokes in the artist. Although Verkerk has detached himself from the traditional portrait with a realistic representation, they still possess a striking resemblance. This also applies to the sculptures he has been making since 2000: painted assemblages that he prefers to call ‘objects’. For this, he cleverly uses all kinds of household materials that he knows how to combine surprisingly.
Verkerk throws away little; materials are reused, and remnants of earlier images find a place in new objects that are literally and figuratively layered. Sometimes the artist doesn't find the solution immediately and continues to ‘tinker’ with his work, as he says himself. A piece can calmly have three or four different versions before the right form is found. However, no work shows a definitive endpoint; it always has something of a possible variant. With this range of possibilities and associations, Emo Verkerk tries to make the viewer experience more than just the object. Works have been selected for the exhibition from his studio that have hardly been exhibited before. Curator: Joost Bergman.
Tania Kovats – Oceanic
20 June 2025 to 4 January 2026
Tania Kovats (Brighton, 1966) creates sculptures, drawings, and large-scale time-based installations that explore our experience and understanding of the natural world. She is intrigued by themes that lie at the intersection of nature and culture, such as geological processes and growth patterns, and examines the relationship between human experience and nature, the Cosmos, and the elements. In recent years, Kovats has taken the element of water as her central subject in her work; the seas and oceans, river systems, maritime culture, floods, and tides, necessarily touching on socio-political and environmental issues.
Kovats is a renowned British visual artist. Oceanic, her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, offers a comprehensive overview of her versatile artistic practice. The exhibition shows her ongoing fascination with the sea, water, and the environment and evokes a deep sense of connection with nature. Central to the presentation are her monumental sculptures, The Divers, her ceramic and textile works, and her drawings. Curator: Brigitte Bloksma.
South Room Program
Khaled Dawwa - Voici mon cœur !
4 April to 2 November 2025
In the context of 80 years of Freedom, museum Beelden aan Zee presents in 2025 the installation Voici mon cœur ! (Here is my heart), 2018-2022, by the exiled Syrian artist Khaled Dawwa (1985). This six-meter-long, contemporary war monument from the collection of the Mucem in Marseille takes the form of a ruinous facade wall in a violence-stricken Damascus. Khaled Dawwa made the work from unfired clay, giving it an extra fragile appearance.
The exhibition of Voici mon cœur ! aligns with the broader theme of the commemoration year, where local stories and diverse perspectives are central. Like traditional war monuments, Voici mon cœur ! also fulfills an educational function, serving as a means to create awareness and stimulate dialogue about the impact of war and the importance of freedom. Dawwa’s monument bridges the past and present in this context. While we reflect on the liberation of the Netherlands eighty years ago, his work offers a contemporary perspective on freedom and unfreedom. It reminds us that the struggle for freedom and human dignity does not end with a historical date but is an ongoing process. The exhibition is accompanied by a documentary about the artist. Curator: Dick van Broekhuizen.
Erwin de Vries
7 November 2025 to 1 March 2026
Museum Beelden aan Zee presents a retrospective exhibition with works by the Surinamese artist Erwin de Vries (Paramaribo, 1929 - 2018) within the historical context of fifty years of Suriname's independence – an event that will be celebrated next autumn with various activities in the Netherlands and Suriname.
Erwin de Vries moved to the Netherlands at the age of eighteen, where he studied at the art academy in The Hague and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He quickly made a name for himself as a sculptor and painter. De Vries is the artist of the National Monument to the Slavery Past in the Oosterpark in Amsterdam, where the keti koti (chains broken) commemoration takes place annually on 1 July in memory of the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean area. After his death, he left behind an extensive and interesting oeuvre, ranging from expressionistically designed sculptures and striking portraits to abstract-expressionist, figurative paintings and drawings. The colorful palette of his paintings shows his Caribbean background and source of inspiration. De Vries' art testifies to an enormous zest for life: earthly life and people, with an emphasis on eroticism and women, are central to him.
The exhibition particularly highlights his sculptures, selected from various institutional and private collections, most of which have not been publicly displayed before. Curators: Joost Bergman and Hanneke Oosterhof.
After Hours
After Hours is an evening program among the sculptures with a dual purpose: to provide a platform for young The Hague talents and to introduce new audiences to culture, particularly sculpture. In 2025, the museum collaborates with six different partners on a program featuring sound art, theater, dance, music, poetry, and installations. DJs play records in the museum café, and there are flash tours through the museum and workshops in the Gipsotheek. On Friday, 7 February 2025, After Hours is organized by theater and makers' house Korzo: www.bazafterhours.nl.
Museum Beelden aan Zee
Museum Beelden aan Zee in The Hague is the place in the Netherlands where sculpture, architecture, and nature come together, with an exhibition and public program where tradition and innovation meet. The iconic museum building, located in the dunes, provides space for about ten exhibitions per year.
Information and tickets: https://www.beeldenaanzee.nl/
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