Celebrating the Icons of Art in Wassenaar

To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Museum Voorlinden is pulling out all the stops from September 12, 2026, to March 7, 2027, with a truly exceptional and festive exhibition: Celebrating the Icons of Art. In it, contemporary icons from the museum collection meet masterpieces from the 20th century. In this encounter, the familiar takes an unexpected turn and surprising connections become visible. For this festive anniversary exhibition, the entire museum is being remodeled for the first time in its history! All aboard for Wassenaar?

Museum Voorlinden

Museum Voorlinden is a Dutch private museum of modern and contemporary art located on the Voorlinden Estate in Wassenaar, South Holland. The art collection of Joop van Caldenborgh housed there is known as the Caldic Collection, the largest private art collection in the Netherlands.

Caldic Collection

The extensive art collection is made accessible through the exhibition of the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions inside and outside the museum. Parts of the collection, which Van Caldenborgh himself calls “eclectic,” were featured in two exhibitions in Rotterdam: Imagine you are standing here in front of me at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 2002–2003, and I promise to love you at the Kunsthal in 2011.

The Caldic Collection of modern and contemporary art, assembled since the early 1970s, consists of paintings, sculptures, collages, and photography, primarily from the 20th century. These include works by Ai Weiwei, Atelier Van Lieshout, Philip Akkerman, Louise Bourgeois, Marcel Broodthaers, Joseph Cornell, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Yayoi Kusama, Ron Mueck, Maurizio Nannucci, Ernesto Neto, Bridget Riley, Cindy Sherman, Sam Taylor-Wood, James Turrell, Gyz la Rivière, and Robert Zandvliet. James Turrell created the Skyspace skylight for Museum Voorlinden. Also on display are Richard Serra's steel sculpture Open ended and large glass objects by Roni Horn. The sculptures by the Van Caldenborgh family in the nearby Clingenbosch Sculpture Garden can be visited by appointment. Below are works by Armando, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Paul McCarthy, Mario Merz, Henry Moore, Petra Morenzi, Panamarenko, Jean Tinguely, and Carel Visser.

Eight artworks from the collection of Museum Voorlinden and two nature photographs are depicted on the stamp sheet about the museum released by PostNL on Monday, July 17, 2017. In collaboration with PostNL and designer Gerard Hadders, the museum selected the images from thousands of artworks owned by Voorlinden. 

“There are a number of permanent works from our collection that deserved a place on the stamp sheet. Ron Mueck’s Couple under an Umbrella is one of them, partly due to the important role the changing seasons play in our museum,” explains Voorlinden Director Suzanne Swarts.

“You can also see the changing seasons moving clockwise on the stamp sheet: from the summery beach scene in the top left, via autumn with the fall leaves, winter with the snowflakes, and spring with the bumblebee,” says Swarts.

The designer of the stamps, Gerard Hadders, wanted to show the role of daylight on the stamps in order to indicate the relationship between the interior and exterior of Museum Voorlinden. A magnificent sheet featuring top artworks!

Celebrating the Icons

Some artworks never let go. They burn themselves onto your retina, continue to surprise, move, and inspire, and even embed themselves in the collective memory. In Celebrating the Icons of Art, these kinds of masterpieces from the twentieth century are brought together with contemporary top pieces from the Voorlinden collection. In the exhibition, you discover how artists build upon what came before them, how ideas travel through time and take shape anew time and again. Art history turns out not to be a fixed narrative, but a lively exchange between past and present, a network of influences, references, and new insights.

Sometimes, in Celebrating the Icons of Art, you immediately see a kinship in form, color, or idea. At other times, the connection seems less obvious. But in every encounter, something special happens: the artworks speak to one another, reveal an unexpected side of themselves, and acquire new meaning. In this way, a festive encounter between past and present is created: a celebration of iconic art and of ten years of Voorlinden.

The exhibition includes works by, among others, Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Nick Cave, Félix González-Torres, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Martha Jungwirth, Mike Kelley, Yayoi Kusama, Fernand Léger, Roy Lichtenstein, Annette Matisseger, Claude Claude, Claude Message, Message Monet, Bruce Nauman, Louise Nevelson, Lygia Pape, Gerhard Richter, and Bridget Riley.

With Celebrating the Icons of Art, Voorlinden not only looks back on 10 special years but also looks ahead. In the exhibition, contemporary crowd favorites from the Voorlinden collection enter into a dialogue with 20th-century masterpieces from the collections of partner museums and institutions. These are works that have shaped our visual memory and have inspired artists and the public for generations. The exhibition shows how artworks from Voorlinden's own collection have also acquired iconic status in a short time. These are works that are clearly dear to many visitors and are inextricably linked to the identity of the museum.

Source: Museum Voorlinden

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Celebrating the Icons of Art in Museum Voorlinden through March 7, 2027:

Celebrating the Icons of Art

Recent and older museum blogs: https://www.freestampmagazine.nl/tag/made-in-holland/