Vleeshal 50 Year Party

This summer, ArtBase Terneuzen and Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art join forces to celebrate Vleeshal’s 50th anniversary. From 5 July to 13 September, they will present the Vleeshal collection, in collaboration with M HKA Antwerp, through a large-scale exhibition project across ten locations throughout Zeeland.

The project offers a unique insight into one of the most exceptional collections of contemporary art in the Netherlands. By acquiring works from artists who participated in its exhibition program, Vleeshal developed a collection that reflects the institution’s history while also possessing international significance. Since 2005, M HKA has managed the collection on long-term loan. M HKA supports the project and also presents works from its own collection.

The project is a joint initiative of Vleeshal and ArtBase Terneuzen, a new player within the cultural landscape. ArtBase Terneuzen is a museum in development, based on a new connective model. While pursuing an international profile, it remains firmly rooted in its local context, seeking innovative ways to bring art closer to people and communities.

Vleeshal Collection On Tour makes connections between works of the collection and unique art spaces and museums throughout Zeeland. It is organized by a curatorial round table led by Julia Mullié, in collaboration with Cathy Jacob, Laurens Otto, and Vivian Ziherl.

At Vleeshal

As a part of the larger exhibition featuring 27 artists across Zeeland, the group exhibition at Vleeshal departs from the piece Compositie met dubbele lijn en blauw vlak (1934) by Marlow Moss. Moss lived and worked in Zeeland before world war two together with their partner, the poet Antoinette Hendrika Wind (A.H. Nijhoff) The piece is an exceptional example of Moss’ contribution to Constructivism and influence on Piet Mondriaan, which has only recently received its due recognition.

As the first piece of Vleeshal’s collection, it anchors a selection of works that use geometric abstraction while emphasizing how personal, lived, and social aspects always inhabit any abstraction or geometry. As such, in many different ways, these works all explore the slippage between formal abstraction and a personal perspective. These range from the grid of the family photo album in Sara Blokland’s work, to the abstracted everyday objects of Hana Miletić, or the paper sheet that holds a letter handwritten by Danh Vo’s father.

On Vleeshal’s collection

In the 1990s, under the impetus of then-director Lex ter Braak, Vleeshal began building an ambitious collection of contemporary visual art. This collection was intended for the new Museum 13/IX in Middelburg, designed by Hannie and Aldo van Eyck. The collection for this museum was to possess “a certain distinctiveness” while being developed in parallel with Vleeshal’s exhibition program. After it transpired in 1995 that there was insufficient political support for the realisation of this museum, the collection was ultimately given on long-term loan to the M HKA in Antwerp in 2005, which has since managed the collection and ensured that it is widely exhibited in the Netherlands, Belgium, and further abroad.

Archival presentation

As part of this exhibition, Vleeshal presents a focused selection of photographs, administrative documents, preparatory sketches, posters, and correspondence drawn from Vleeshal’s archive that are mainly held by the Zeeuws Archief. It focuses on artists intimately linked to Vleeshal’s history across five decades: Art & Language, John Baldessari, Marinus Boezem, General Idea, Barbara Jean, Suchan Kinoshita, Pipilotti Rist, Dorry Sack, Tomas Saraceno, and Nedko Solakov.