Museum as Sundial

Ana María Millán, ADEZIV, EDHV, Kiki&Joost, Adele Dipasquale, Gala Porras-Kim, Michael Portnoy, Paul Panhuysen, Ayumi Paul, Ei Arakawa-Nash, John Körmeling

The Van Abbemuseum presents Museum as Sundial, a reorientation of the museum that takes the sundial, one of humanity's oldest technologies for finding direction, as a tool for orientation in the present. Bringing together eleven artists and designers across sculpture, film, architecture, videogame design, sound, performance, performance and live-action role-play, alongside special loans from archives and collections, the exhibition asks how a museum might help us find direction in times of profound change.

The starting point is the Van Abbemuseum's original 1936 building, designed in dialogue with the sun. Museum as Sundial returns to this founding logic: the museum becomes a sundial, its central gallery a point of orientation and its galleries vectors connecting artworks to Eindhoven and beyond, moving backwards towards archaeology, sideways into the city, and upwards towards the sun.

"A sundial represents both sky and ground," says Van Abbemuseum Director Defne Ayas. "Inspired by the architecture of our building from 90 years ago, we ask how we, as a museum rooted in Eindhoven, might develop new forms of orientation for the next decade. Rather than looking only inward, we return to one of humanity's oldest technologies for finding direction: the sun."

Museum as Sundial brings three museum models into contact: the archaeological museum, which looks backwards through material traces; the children's museum, emerging with the Brooklyn Children's Museum in 1899, which introduces curiosity and the beginner's mind; and the city’s museum of modern and contemporary art, which looks inward into its own exhibition histories and outward towards Eindhoven, of which it has been part since 1936.

Gala Porras-Kim reconstructs skies from 12,000 years ago in Asymptote Towards an Ambiguous Horizon (2021), depicting the Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe. Eindhoven design studio EDHV approaches archaeology as a way of imagining the city’s future: ancient wooden beams become drawing instruments, while a speculative Eindhoven metro anticipates future excavations.

The exhibition returns to Eindhoven's histories of artistic experimentation. Paul Panhuysen (1934–2015) worked across art, participation and sound, joining the museum's education department in 1966–67 before directing Eindhoven's platform Het Apollohuis until 2001. John Körmeling restores elements of the museum's original 1936 architecture and brings his sundial-making practice into the exhibition.

In a second constellation considers childhood, play, and alternative knowledge. Ei Arakawa-Nash revisits Gutai founder Jirō Yoshihara's 1956 Please Draw Freely, transforming the museum through collective drawing. Ana María Millán uses videogame design and live-action role-play to explore Eindhoven’s technological landscape and its roots in extractive infrastructures. Adele Dipasquale's Loose Voice Toolkit (2024), made with primary school children, explores non-verbal communication. Drawings from the Rhoda Kellogg Collection, ABC artist books, and mandalas by Anne Frank at age twelve position children's ways of seeing as knowledge in their own right.

Drawing on Speelruimte, the museum's 1974 exhibition made by and for children, Michael Portnoy premieres a new participatory performance and durational social club, developed in collaboration with Christian Wassmann. Through shifting roles, confusion, ambiguity and complication, the work pushes speech and behaviour toward absurdity, invention and experimental intimacy. Kiki & Joost draw on Eindhoven's circus and street life, while ADEZIV Network presents Rest is Work, treating rest as collective practice and proposing alternative rhythms for organising life. Ayumi Paul develops a new score with the museum choir around the sun. Songs from the National Archive of Brabant Folk Songs bring local histories into dialogue with larger timescales.

Credits: Directed by Defne Ayas, collectively inspired and generated. Curated by Abril Cisneros Ramírez (Assistant Curator), developed with generous input from Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, (Senior Curator), Steven ten Thije (Interim Business Director), Maziar Afrassiabi (Curator), and in dialogue with the museum team, including the museum choir and volunteers. Special thanks to Anne Frank House, Boekenberg Eindhoven, ZKM Karlsruhe, and The Watermill Center. 

Museum as Sundial coincides with Collection as Cosmos (until 2030), Ayoung Kim's Delivery Dancer: Time Curves (until spring 2027) and System Thinkers initiative (2026-2028).