A museum employee stands with a bag full of markers at the entrance of the Museum of the Spirit, where works of art by artists with a mental or psychological disability hang. One of the works is a portrait of Peter R. de Vries, made by Esrah van Rooij. The artwork has been defaced with texts by visitors. And that is exactly the intention: Coloring outside the lines is called the activity. Every visitor can have their say on the walls, the floor and even the works of art.
Long rows
Levien Wiggers (30) has just painted ‘Wars of pretentiousness’ on the wall. “The cultural sector has pretensions. Not this Museum Night. This night is a social event and lowers the threshold. Normally it is quiet in a museum. Now it’s sparkling. A very different vibe than on a Sunday afternoon,” says Wiggers.
In the museum, visitors can have themselves photographed in a photobooth with model/Michael Jackson fan Bruin ‘Jackson’ Parry. Wiggers and Lotte Elsman (24) are up for that. “We enjoyed doing some activities with some friends first and then dancing in the Stedelijk Museum. We also want to visit the City Archives and Foam.”
But a trip along various museums with the ticket – a wristband – of 22.50 euros turns out to be a vain hope. All 32,000 tickets were sold out for the Museum Night in which 55 museums participate and the lines have been long, very long since the opening.
social event
The restaurant in the Hermitage quickly fills up with mainly people in their twenties and thirties. There is dancing and drinking. Pianist Helena Basilova, who was inspired by the medieval work Roman de la Rose in which all aspects of love are colorfully described and the Garden of Love takes center stage, is eagerly waiting for the public. In the church hall she plays a piano adaptation of Tristan and Isolde by Wagner while beautiful light images appear on the walls. The hall is almost empty. “Visitors linger at the bar. You’re not here to drink, but to visit the museum,” she says, a little incensed.
Friends Eeke Kenninck (29) and Catherine van der Helm (28) are there for art and walk past the exhibition Romanovs under the spell of the Knights. “The idea that you can go to the museum once a year in the evening is nice,” says Van der Helm, who canceled a visit to the Stedelijk because of the queue.
In front of the Allard Pierson, the queue extends to the Langebrugsteeg. It is also so busy here that the museum is considering closing its doors around half past nine, says an employee.
In the museum, palmistry, making friends’ books, drawing nude models between the plaster statues and mummifying a fish are popular. On a table are books on magic, alchemy and astrology from the esoteric collection from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. In the corner, a palm reader reads visitors’ hands. Sude Zorluozpinar (23) reads her hand: “She said that I have a great sense of responsibility and that I don’t share my deepest feelings easily. Well, I recognize something in it,” says Zorluozpinar, who had to wait an hour for it.
Laurens van Kessel (24) sums it up nicely: “This is not the night of the museum, but the night of the long queue.”
‘Almost on the fist’
By ten o’clock, the word spreads that some museums are closing their doors. ‘To the #museumnacht with friends: bizarre lines everywhere, people almost fists to enter the Rijks’, someone tweeted.
The three sisters Rianne (23), Margje (20) and Selina (26) Horning are by then sitting with a pencil and sheet of paper on their laps when drawing the nude models. “First do an activity and then go to the silent disco in the Rijks or dance in the Van Gogh.”
But the Museumplein will be closed by then. Many choose to stay in one place only. And so Arti not only attracts an artistic audience, but also young people who, in their own words, have come for the museum night to ‘drink and dance’.
Sokworsteles
Arti has been transformed into a utopian playground. ‘Playing as food for the mind’ is in Arti’s folder. There are performances, installations and interactive artworks. For example, performance artist Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti performs a popular Bolivian folkloric dance, a choreography with erotic play to music. Artist Alex Winters spins around in his self-built sound installation and tries to get a grip on the space around him.
Downstairs next to the bar a kind of box ring has been created where those interested in the project Socks off can ‘sock wrestle’, a project by the radical artist Pennie Key. She invites the visitor to explore the boundaries between sport and (role) play: a game for children to foot fetishists: ‘Play the game or enjoy as a voyeur’.
Thomas, Thom, Thijs and Jonathan, who know each other from their student days in Rotterdam, take the game very seriously and roll over each other to take each other’s socks off to the encouragement of the public. Do not scratch, do not pull hair, do not spit, do not squeeze is on the wall. Exhausted, the (former) students explain how they ended up in Arti. “Because other lines elsewhere were even longer and we normally don’t get there quickly in Arti,” says Thomas.
–
