AUDIENCE REACTIONS TO THE 2018 EXHBITIONS

Audience research shows that the Kunsthal scored an 8.2 out of 10 for its overall programme in 2018, with peaks of an 8.9 for Hyperrealism Sculpture, another 8.9 for Viktor&Rolf, and an 8.6 for Action<->Reaction. Events such as Kunsthallucinations and Kunsthal LIVE on Sunday also scored above average, respectively 8.8 and 8.5.

During the final weeks of the Kunsthal’s 25th anniversary exhibition Paul Delvaux. Master of the Dream, the exhibition Michael Kvium. Circus Europa during Art Rotterdam 2018. Kvium focused on the situation in Europe, sketching the political stage and daily life as if it were a circus performance while posing uncomfortable questions with his art.

Together with the extremely successful exhibition Hyperrealism Sculpture, covering fifty years of hyperrealist sculpture, to our great surprise our spring programme managed to mobilise over 250,000 visitors. An incredible number of visitors were fascinated by the near-lifelike sculptures.

The spectacular opening of the exhibition Viktor&Rolf Fashion Artists 25 Years on 25 May – attended by Princess Mabel, Viktor&Rolf and many other high-profile guests – resulted in an incredible amount of (inter)national media attention and festive photographs of visitors on the catwalk.

The third summer edition of All you can Art resulted in an abundance of inspiration, creativity and special encounters. This year the Summer School was also open to older participants. A mixed group of motivated students between the ages of 18 and 50 worked for six weeks under the inspired guidance of David Bade, Tirzo Martha and artists-in-residence from the IBB. At the Kunsthal and on location they worked together with clients of the Stichting Laurens and Antes and with students of the Zuiderpark College.

Our visitors were sometimes astonished by this large studio in the gallery, and sometimes participated in an activity or entered into a conversation with an artist or student. It was also the time of year when many international tourists visited the Kunsthal.

All you can Art will continue in 2019! This project is now an indispensable part of the Rotterdam cultural landscape. In the summer of 2019, under the inspired leadership of the artists David Bade and Tirzo Martha, AYCA will come to the Kunsthal again and travel into the city more than ever, with two locations of its own in the South Rotterdam area: the Pumping Station and 272-274 Groene Hilledijk.

In the autumn, the high-quality art exhibition Action<->Reaction. 100 Years of Kinetic Art, organised in collaboration with the Grand Palais and the renowned French guest curator Serge Lemoine (former Président of Musée d’Orsay and Professor emeritus at Sorbonne University, Paris) and Marianne Le Pommeré (Historian of Art), managed to mobilise a lot of art lovers. The flickering, moving and spinning artworks in the exhibition provoked a lot of reactions on social media.

The exhibitions The Dark Side of Dick Bruna and Hugo Claus, Con Amore provided context and more insight into the worlds of the illustrator Dick Bruna and the writer Hugo Claus. In the exhibition Surf Tribe, Stephan Vanfleteren showed his great talent as a photographer in his portraits of surfing heroes from all over the world.

Together with Rotterdam partners like Groot Handelsgebouw, Poetry International, the City Archives and the CBK we collaborated on small exhibition gems like I Belong Here. 65 Years of the Groot Handelsgebouw, Maaskant Drawings, and Poetry of a Nation/The Nation of Poetry by KAMP HORST.

And in Kunsthal Light, the talented artists Gijs van Lith, Nazif Lopulissa, and Willem Besselink created extraordinary site-specific installations that were visible to everyone walking along the ramp, including accidental passers-by. The display window functioned as an invitation to, by all means, come in and have a look.

Please visit the timeline on our website for a complete overview of all 2018 exhibitions.