Rendezvous with Frans Hals

Marriage of two museums
The Frans Hals Museum, famous for its exquisite collection of Old Masters and De Hallen Haarlem, museum for contemporary art in Haarlem, are getting married on March 29, 2018. The museums will present themselves to you rejuvenated and united. Recognizable, but nonetheless different. From April 2018 onwards there will be one museum with one name—the Frans Hals Museum—at two locations—Hof and Hal. A museum that thinks transhistorically connecting heritage and tradition with present-day art and social issues, questioning traditional (art historical) categories and developing new insights in the meaning of (art) objects and their interpretation.

As in every good marriage, the partners retain an individual identity. They challenge and complement one another. This interaction creates new horizons, surprising insights and unexpected discoveries. The revamped exhibition programme will have three flavours. Top-flight exhibitions of Golden Age art will alternate with unusual presentations of work by prominent contemporary artists. In so-called transhistorical exhibitions, old and contemporary art are brought into conversation. Think  a stimulating mix of tradition and tomorrow, where paint strokes meet pixels, with the museum presenting old alongside new(er) art or providing 16th and 17th century artwork with a 21st century interpretation. Online our new website, designed by KesselsKramer and Build In Amsterdam, enables you to experience our collection and exhibitions in an informative and playful way.

In the future we aim at renovating both venues, Hal—in the Grote Markt—and Hof—in Groot Heiligland—in collaboration with So-Il architects (New York) in order to extend an even better welcome to our historic buildings.

Revamped Frans Hals Museum Opens with a Rendezvous with Frans Hals
The revamped museum opens with the experimental collection exhibition Rendezvous with Frans Hals, featuring a flirtatious encounter between contemporary artists, curators and founding father Frans Hals. The exhibition runs from April to September across two locations, Hal (Grote Markt) and Hof (Groot Heiligland) and functions as a "polyphonic choir," an assembly of different voices re-imagining Hals in subjective, sometimes unconventional ways.

At the "Hof" location, artists and art historians respond to orginal works by Hals in a variety of idiosyncratic ways—from re-identifiying sitters to approaching Hals as an abstract painter. At the "Hal" location on the Grote Markt, a group show reflects on the notion of the imaginary artwork and Hals’ fictitious oeuvre. Art history is riddeled with artworks that only exist in people’s minds, stories, novels and other forms of fiction, works that are inaccessible because they have been destroyed or gone missing, or because they are locked away somewhere, hidden from the public eye. They can only be seen by what Wordsworth called “that inward eye: the pictures we never see, we are only told about them and asked to imagine them.”

List of participating artists: Hans Aarsman & Roy Villevoye, Laurence Aëgerter, Jan Andriesse, Mieke Bal, Pierre Bismuth, Michaël Borremans, Shezad Dawood, Anton Henning & Jasper Hagenaar, Cédric Noël, Koos Breukel, Pavèl van Houten, Nina Katchadourian, Melvin Moti, Cédric Noël, Saskia Noor van Imhoff, Batia Suter, Nedko Solakov Pieter Vermeersch, Riet Wijnen, Luuk Wilmering and others

Publication The Transhistorical Museum
Despite surge of interest in a transhistorical exhibition an overview and theoretical mapping of transhistorical curatorial practices has so far been missing. An anthology, published by Frans Hals Museum, Museum M and Valiz, aims to fill this gap and brings together contributions by leading scholars, curators and museum professionals of the field. It looks at the concepts that undergird the transhistorical, describes the theoretical horizon it relates to and illuminates the practical applications it has fostered. As such, it provides the grounds for further research and practical applications.

The book is divided in three parts: 1. Terminology & Theoretical Horizon; 2. Art & Time; 3. Curatorial Strategies. Available June 1, 2018.

With contributors by e.g. Bice Curiger, Penelope Curtis, Hendrik Folkerts, Jean-Hubert Martin, Ruth Noack, Alexander Nagel, Jasper Sharp, Abigail Winograd.

Frans Hals Museum – Hof – Groot Heiligland 62
Frans Hals Museum - Hal - Grote Markt 16