Delinking and Relinking - Experience art by smelling, touching, hearing and seeing
Delinking and Relinking Experience art by smelling, touching, hearing and seeing
Featuring 120 pieces of art and spanning all five floors of the museum’s collection wing, Delinking and Relinking invites you to experience art differently. Sometimes in the literal sense, by touching, smelling or listening to it; other times metaphorically, by giving expression to different, lesser-known voices. Mostly inspiring and occasionally confrontational, Delinking and Relinking spans more than a century of art history, with Hommage à Apollinaire by Marc Chagall from 1913 as earliest work and This Means Tableau from 2019 by Laure Prouvost as most recent work.
Multi-sensory
With over 25 multi-sensory tools, including texts in Braille, scent interpretations, tactile drawings and soundscapes, Delinking and Relinking represents the first, fully multi-sensory collection display in the Netherlands. Besides enriching the museum experience for everyone, the exhibition is accessible to a wide audience, including visually or hearing-impaired visitors and wheelchair users.
Five free multi-media tours
You have the option of five different media tours to guide you through the exhibition. The Introduction Tour and Family Tour offer a general overview for both young and old. If you want to deepen your visit, you can also choose the Bodily Encounters Tour, the Love Letters Tour or The Broader Story Tour. You can access the tours for free by downloading the Smartify app on your smartphone (Google Play store) (Apple store).
Broader perspectives
The exhibition was developed in collaboration with various experts in the field of physical accessibility. Also consulted were The Office of Queer Affairs and Wie Zijn Wij (Who Are We), two interest groups that have a long-standing working relationship with the museum to help introduce broader perspectives to the museum.
In the press
“If there is one thing Delinking and Relinking makes clear, it’s in how many different ways you can experience an artwork: with your eyes, your nose and your hands, in relation to other works of art, or in relation to societal developments. You will have to visit often, as this catching exhibition invites you to look, feel and smell again and again.” **** De Volkskrant
"Delinking and Relinking is an inviting exhibition and if the Van Abbe is still a pioneer in the art debate and if Delinking and Relinking says something about the direction the discourse is taking, then there is hope for the visual arts." **** NRC
“There is a lot of logic in the chronological lay out of the works on display. The closer to today, the greater the social commitment of the artists. Climate, environmental pollution, ethnic conflicts, gender inequality; they are all treated. Fortunately, the message almost never dominates the viewing experience." De Tijd
"Delinking and Relinking explores how the artworks relate directly to what the artists see, feel and experience happening around them and have attempted to tackle some of the big topics of their era." Museum Next
