ARTS HOLLAND MAGAZINE
new museum spaces
The new galleries mark the first semi-permanent exhibition of a rich body of works usually associated with the movement in Holland. Designed by the artist Krijn de Koning and the architect Anne Holtrop, the wonderful installation offers proof of both great similarities and differences between works as divergent as the world famous Victory Boogie Woogie (Mondrian), the iconic reclining chair (Rietveld), a rare Bruynzeel children’s room (Vilmos Huszar) and a model of an architectural master piece, the Weissenhof Estate (Oud). Throughout the varied presentations, visitors can hear the sounds of jazz and contemporary music, lightly but surely pervading the atmosphere, as if to underline the bustling urban environment that spawned the deep ambition to simultaneously visualize and design for a new world.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam Studio Wieki Somers Merry-Go-Round, coatrack, 2008
In 2008 Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen filled its new foyer space with artworks and contemporary design. Olaf Nicolai designed a soccer cage for the courtyard. Bertjan Pot made a shop with wall frames that simultaneously function as vitrines. Frank Bruggeman designed a large blue desk in the shape of a capital
B (for Boijmans) that serves as a ticketing and information desk. The entrance area further offers an espresso bar, designed by Simon Heijdens, educational spaces by Jurgen Bey and handout fluorescent jewels by designer Ted Noten. The eye-catcher in this newly configured space is the Merry-Go-Round coatrack by Studio Wieki Somers (Wieki Somers and Dylan van der Berg). Initially the museum invited Somers to take part in an exhibition but instead she ‘preferred to do something more permanent that visitors could actually use.’ In her wardrobe carousel visitors drape their coats on hangers that hoist up to the ceiling on red and white ropes and fasten and lock the ropes with a simple device. The result is a ceiling lined with colorful coats cheerfully decorating the museum foyer, much in the way that books decorate and give life to a bookcase. Somers’ Merry-Go-Round offers an artistic solution to an old problem: bored moody staff lurking behind temporary partitions. By combining this imaginative coat rack with the other designs in the open foyer, Museum Boijmans successfully transforms a functional space into a wonderful art gallery.
Merry-Go-Round, coatrack, Studio Wieki Somers, 2008. photo – elian somers
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