Remix Rotterdam. Boijmans x Wereldmuseum

Remix Rotterdam

‘Remix Rotterdam’ is an encounter between two museums: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and the Wereldmuseum: museums that are inextricably linked to the city of Rotterdam and share common donors and visitors. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which opened in 1849, has traditionally focused on collecting Western objects and works of art. The Wereldmuseum, founded in 1885, focuses primarily on cultural artefacts from Asia, Africa and the Americas. The exhibition, featuring 120 objects from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, constitutes an experimental, cosmopolitan museum based on a remix of the Rotterdam collections. It blurs classical collecting categories and reveals trans-historic and transcultural connections.

Four types of encounters

The exhibition has been curated by Alexandra van Dongen, curator at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and Wouter Welling, curator at the National Museum for World Cultures. It brings together works of art and everyday objects from all over the world, creating a dialogue between different cultures. Remix Rotterdam explores four types of encounters: universal and artistic encounters, trade encounters and (post-) colonial encounters. Each encounter brings together objects that together tell a more complex story.

Universal encounters: the fascination with life, birth, interpersonal relations and death

Not all motifs, symbols and gestures in art and culture are found all around the world. However, the fascination with life, birth, interpersonal relations and death are common to all cultures and all periods. The protective mother, seeking contact with others, the inevitability of death and the desire for contact with the deceased are universal subjects that we encunter across the globe.

Artistic encounters: Jean Michel Basquiat and Gordon Bennett

Two famous artists meet in ‘Remix Rotterdam’: Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) and Gordon Bennett (1955-2014), the first collected by Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, the second by the Wereldmuseum. Both artists were vocal critics of racism and prejudice. Although they make references in their work to their mixed racial origins and hybrid identity, in which the history of colonialism and slavery played a role, neither of them wished to be defined in ethnic terms by the art world. Basquiat once famously said: ‘I am not a black artist, I am an artist.’ Basquiat and Bennett never met in person, but Bennett addressed Basquiat long after his death in his painting Notes to Basquiat: In the Future Everything Will Be as Certain as It Used to Be, in which he connected the socio-political context in Australia to Basquiat's work.

'By exhibiting the painting at the Wereldmuseum, we are showing it as a historical document of the cosmopolitan Middle Ages, with international trade routes from Asia, through the Middle East, to Africa and Europe. It can be interpreted as a piece of world heritage that belongs to everyone, including the Syrian community, and that makes me very happy.’

Curator Alexandra van Dongen.

(Post-)colonial encounters: reconciliation, influence, stereotyping and fascination

Although many Western paintings have depicted colonial life, they never show injustice and they exhibit hardly any self-criticism. In fact, they confirm the inequality and contribute to a negative image of the oppressed ethnic groups. Europeans collected items from the new cultures they encountered on a large scale, either to show off or out of a fascination for the unknown. Despite the inequality or oppression, indigenous peoples were also inspired by Western clothing, materials and utensils and adopted them as status symbols. Wester paintings, adverts, products and comic strips did not depict he cruel reality of slavery, but often featured stereotypes of African people serving and dancing.

Intervention by Paul van der Eerden

The Rotterdam-born artist Paul van der Eerden (1954) was asked to connect the collections of both museums in a personal way by staging a number of interventions. For many years, he has curated exhibitions that have brought together the works of renowned and unknown artists and insiders and outsiders in combination with ethnographic artefacts and folk art. In his Remixes, he plays a game of ‘free association’ with objects from both collections. The combinations create a coherent narrative about the human condition, love and hate, power and the fleeting nature of life, the pursuit of knowledge: grandiose and compelling, yet simultaneously inadequate and futile.

Boijmans Next Door

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s collection is being dispersed across Rotterdam and Schiedam. Some 500 masterpieces are being displayed in eleven special exhibitions at eight neighbouring institutions under the title ‘Boijmans Next Door’. The exhibitions in these guest venues create encounters between Boijmans’ collection and those of its neighbours. From February 2021, the Maritime Museum is showing a selection of seascapes, and the Wereldmuseum will be showing masterpieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Van Eijck. As a result, you don’t have to miss out on seeing the collection during the museum’s renovation. ‘Boijmans Next Door’ has been made possible by Stichting Droom en Daad.