From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
Nestled at the southern tip of the Netherlands, Maastricht is in striking distance of Belgium and Germany – and offers visitors to TEFAF the chance to take in a host of museum shows in all three countries. Highlights this year include exhibitions on Rembrandt in Frankfurt, Susan Sontag in Bonn, and the history of puddings in The Hague.
Man and Woman at a Spinning Wheel (c. 1560–70), Pieter Pietersz. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Rembrandt’s Amsterdam: Golden Times?
Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Until 23 March
Portraits by Rembrandt and his contemporaries tend to show the urban elite – governors, civic guards or those who had come to prominence in the craft and trade guilds of Amsterdam. For these people, this era of religious tolerance and booming trade certainly constituted a golden age – but the question at the heart of this exhibition is: what about everybody else? Around 100 paintings, sculptures, prints and artefacts – including major loans from the Rijksmuseum and the Met – present the many faces of this 17th-century metropolis.
‘Woolworth Shopper’, Binghamton (1987), Bruce Wrighton. Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery; © Estate of Bruce Wrighton
American Photography
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Until 9 June
Walt Whitman, who was obsessed by photography from almost the moment it first arrived in America in the 1840s, once saw in a photograph of his face ‘this heart’s geography’s map’. This survey of more than 200 photographs at the Rijksmuseum begins with early daguerreotypes made across the country, before moving on to examine the modernist experiments of Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, the post-war work of photographers such as Robert Frank and more recent images by Dawoud Bey, Sally Mann and Nan Goldin.
Never Change Lovers in the Middle of the Night (2006), Mickalene Thomas. Courtesy Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami; © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022; © the artist
When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting
Bozar, Brussels
Until 10 August
Hailed as an art-historical landmark when it first opened at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town in 2022, this exhibition arrives in Brussels for its second European leg, after a stop in Basel. With 150 works by some 120 artists, the display is the first to consider on such a large scale how representations of Black identity in figurative painting have evolved since the 1920s, tracing relationships between modernist movements on the continent of Africa and diasporic developments such as the Harlem Renaissance.
(2023), Kaili Smith. Photo: Peter Cox; © Kaili Smith
Reality Check: 10 Years of MORE, 10 Years of Realism
Museum MORE, Gorssel
Until 9 June
The Museum of Modern Realism (Museum MORE) turns 10 this year. While it is perhaps best known for its collections and exhibitions that show the development of Dutch neorealism over the course of the 20th century – in particular, the world’s largest collection of work by the Dutch magical realist Carel Willink – the museum is celebrating its birthday with a look to the future, not the past: the criterion for this exhibition of works by 50 artists is that all must have been produced in the last 10 years.
The Old Market in Ghent (1922), Jules De Bruycker. Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent
Jules De Bruycker
Museum voor Schone Kunsten Gent
22 March–29 June
The Belgian modernist’s monumental drawings of carnivalesque street scenes will be a revelation to many – including those who have already heard of him, since when De Bruycker is known, it tends to be for his etchings. The MSK in Ghent – the city where the artist was born and lived for most of his life – is looking to put things right with this ambitious survey of 150 drawings and watercolours; they range from precise, often caricatural drawings of single figures to scenes of exuberant folk festivals, parades and hawkers surrounded by their trinkets.
Susan Sontag during the filming of Duet for Cannibals in 1969. Photo: Peder Björkgren; © AB Svensk Filmindustri
Susan Sontag: Seeing and Being Seen
Bundeskunsthalle Bonn
14 March–28 September
Sontag’s On Photography remains as influential a treatise on the medium today as it was when it appeared in 1977, tracing the history of photography in the United States from the 19th century through to the Pop aesthetic of Andy Warhol. For Sontag, photography engendered a ‘chronic voyeuristic relation to the world’. The antidote, in her eyes, was action; this exhibition traces the evolution of her thought alongside her activities as a film director and her engagements with a multitude of human rights issues, from homophobia to the Vietnam War.
Still from Drama 1882 (2024) by Wael Shawky. Courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery Beirut/Hamburg
Wael Shawky: Drama 1882
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht
Until 30 March
Shawky’s first feature-length opera film is a restaging of the Urabi Revolution (1879–82), when Egyptian armed forces launched an abortive rebellion against European influence, setting in motion the beginning of British imperial rule. It was shown at the Egyptian Pavilion at Venice last year and was lauded as one of the stand-out works of the whole Biennale. Its joint acquisition by the Stedelijk, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and the Bonnefanten is no small feat, signalling the ambition of the Dutch national collection to encompass new perspectives on colonial history. The work debuts for the Dutch public, and any visitors to TEFAF who didn’t make it to Venice, in Maastricht.
Illustration from The Book of Patisserie (1873), Jules Gouffé. University of Amsterdam
Grand Dessert: The History of Dessert
Kunstmuseum den Haag
Until 6 April
The history of pudding finally gets its due in this elaborate art-historical confection at the Kunstmuseum den Haag. With hundreds of objects ranging from cookery books and menus to ice-cream moulds and tableware, the exhibition casts its hungry eye over sweet delicacies from the 17th century to the present. To titillate the tastebuds even further, the museum has partnered with a fragrance manufacturer to produce 12 scents for visitors to encounter through the exhibition, including those of baklava and the Persian ice cream bastani sonnati.
Installation view of In Search of Magic….– A Proposal for A New Constitution for the Republic of Iceland by Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson at Art is a Verb at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Photo: Peter Cox; ©Libia Castro/Ólafur Ólafsson
Art is a Verb
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Until 27 April
The eighth edition of the Van Abbemuseum’s annual ‘Positions’ series also serves as a farewell for director Charles Esche, who curated the show and left the museum after 20 years at the end of 2024. It brings five projects by solo artists and collectives into dialogue with one another, this year to address the premise that art is a form of action. Among them are Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson, who make a plea for the proposed new constitution of Iceland that was rejected in 2011, and the artist al-yené, who highlights Russian oppression of the Sakha people.
From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.