Oisterwijk....

Lisa and I had a fun afternoon exploring around the youth hostel where we had planned to host Dutch Nash Hash in early October. For awhile it looked like we might have been able to pull it off despite COVID-19, but we finally came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t work with the venue restrictions. She had suggested having a dinosaur theme, so we stopped back in January at a dinosaur park to see if it would be a good place for a beer break. Since they don’t serve beer, that was an easy place to cross off the list.

We parked in the town and then walked out to the venue and back.

We came across a cool outdoor amphitheater and thought it could be fun to circle up here, but the dates wouldn’t have worked (at least in pre-corona days when it was actively used until mid-October).

I loved that the town had this lovely set of trees in the middle of the main road.

On our drive home, we stopped outside of Tilburg at De Koningshoeven Brewery, a Dutch Trappist brewery founded in 1884 that brews under the name La Trappe.

There were no more tours that day, but we managed to find seats in the crowded bar so we could taste one of their seasonal brews. We had originally hoped to have a beer stop here for the ballbreaker trail, but that’s now dependent on if we change locations entirely for next year.

The monks had largely run the brewery inside the monastery until 1999. Now their role is much smaller, but they still remain active in the business to ensure the ability to label the beers as Trappist.

Winter Outings...

In late January, Terri picked up Kati and me to take us to Wassenaar Beach for a walk. 

We came across a crazy amount of shell debris, presumably being gathered by the above tractor.

It was great to be back in the dunes.

Two days later, Carlin and I went for a run during which I stopped several times to capture some cool reflection shots.

One Last Museum Plus Some Natural Art...

My final museum stop was at the Museum of Bags and Purses to see their special Trunk Show, featuring vintage designer trunks that first class passengers would have used during cruises and other world travels.

It wasn’t a very large exhibit, but it was interesting to see all the creative ways these trunks were designed. Since I pay an annual fee for a Museumkaart (Museum Card), it’s usually free for me to pop into a museum to see just their special exhibit.

I never would have guessed that my visit at the end of January would be my last as the museum permanently closed less than two months later due to COVID-19 restrictions. Hopefully the owners will manage to find another home for their collection as it really would be a shame if it has to be sold off separately.

Lastly, I took a few photos outside that day, including this reflection selfie taken next to the Van Gogh Museum...

...and these cool reflection shots on the still waters of a random canal.

Something Entirely Different...

In a corner of the Hermitage that I’d never visited before, I came across the Outsider Art Museum, which features art made by individuals who aren’t formally trained as artists and thus their work tends to be authentic and unconventional. This exhibition Woest (Fierce) featured a retrospective of Dutch artist Willem van Genk who passed away in 2005.

He first made drawings in pen and ink, then collages in oil and eventually drawings in four ballpoint pen colors. This collage was of The Hague...

...and this drawing was of a London tube station.

From the 1980s, he created trolleys made of waste material...

...and eventually an entire trolley bus station.

Outside the museum were three cool junk art sculptures made by Patrick Visser, a Dutch Metal Artist. He says, “My passion is to bring dead, cold discarded metal to life.” I agree that he’s done a wonderful job.

Jewels: The Glitter of the Russian Court...

My next stop was Hermitage Amsterdam to see their special Jewels exhibition. This late 17th century jewel box decorated with 26 rubies, 24 emeralds and 8 garnets was owned by Catherine the Great. 

This 18th century ring with an erotic miniature inside was apparently a secret pleasure of Catherine the Great.

This enormous dress was actually for a child in the 18th century.

Check out how tiny the waist of this dress was!

This painting starred Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, the consort of Czar Nicholas I. Most impressive was the three long strands of pearls considering in order to have found one pearl approximately 15,000 oysters would have had to be opened. 

This flower bouquet from the mid-18th century, was actually a brooch worn by Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Czar Peter the Great. It featured over 850 diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires and would be displayed when it wasn’t worn. 

The exhibition was definitely an impressive mix of gowns, jewels and paintings.

The Beanery...

Entering The Beanery is like walking into a time capsule. It is a life-size, walk-in artwork created in 1965 by American artist Edward Kienholz representing the interior of Barney’s Beanery, a bar in West Hollywood frequented by artists.

Modelled at two-thirds the size of the original, it features the smells and sounds of the bar. All the customers have clocks for faces with the time set at 10:10; only Barney, the owner, has a real face. The artist said, “The entire work symbolizes the switch from real time (symbolized by a newspaper) to the surrealist time inside the bar, where people waste time, kill time, forget time and ignore time.”

Many of the elements included are very realistic including many authentic items from the bar, offering critical commentary of society at that time.

This installation was first exhibited in the parking lot of the bar in 1965 and has been housed in the Stedelijk since 1970.

More Contemporary Art...

Elsewhere in the museum, there were some other interesting pieces of contemporary art, including this neon heart...

...and Thomas Hirschhorn’s Neighbours, depicting the destructive force of violence by an apocalyptic explosion in a miniature landscape.

Precarious Patricia by Anna Uddenberg was quite shocking, especially when viewed from the other side, as she looked so incredibly realistic.

I forgot to capture a shot of the tag for this one, but it looked like a bunch of squished colorful cars.

British artist Damien Hirst made Waste in 1994 by cramming unused medical trash into a display case. (Sadly, since COVID-19 invaded, used medical waste is truly becoming a problem as careless folks toss disposable masks all over the place.) The message of this particular sculpture is that because science and technology has invented so much, people have begun to feel entitled not to die.

This bizarre contraption is Compost Toilet by Joep van Lieshout, an attempt to bring environmental awareness into the home.

In Playing with Tradition, Richard Hutton altered a digital photograph of a rug by extending the colors of the last unmodified row of pixels across the length of the carpet. The rug was then hand knotted in wool and silk by artisans in India who actually struggled with this simple design as compared to their usual complex ones.

It was great to see a class of young Dutch students learning about contemporary art.

Incredible Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama gifted Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show to the museum in 1965. The rowboat is covered in fabric phalluses coated in plaster and the wallpaper is covered in photos of the boat to give a sense of an infinite space.  

It’s impossible to tell from this image, but this isn’t just a poster, but rather a large mural across the top of the stairs. 

Lastly, in a section of modern art, Dam Square from 1898 stood out to me.