Toolshop - Different ways to discover our collection

The museum knows that a narrative of the self is, by definition, incomplete. Therefore we invite people from outside the museum, individuals with a different kind of knowledge and a different background, to add their own stories and interpretations. This way we want to ensure that a wider range of stories and memories, recounted in a variety of voices, emerges from the collections.

Five tools are available in the museum at this moment. These can be found in the Toolshop at the start of the exhibition. 

1. No Kiddin’ - an audio tour through children’s eyes

The museum invites visitors to view the collection through the eyes of children. Children have a distinct way of looking; they see different things from adults, and often perceive striking connections and inspiring analogies that grown-ups miss. The museum incorporates their way of seeing into an audio tour. Children and young people aged from 5 to 17 recount their reactions to the works of art. The audio tour starts on the top floor where the most recent work is shown, and accompanies the visitor down to lower levels. The older the works of art become, the older the children providing the commentary.
Concept: Marleen Hartjes

2. Punt.Point - Self guided tour

Artist and choreographer Sara Wookey and architect Rennie Tang have developed the self-guided tour Punt.Point as a unique way to experience the exhibition Collection Now. This tour includes a wearable tool-kit that invites the participant to explore different ways of inhabiting the architecture of a museum. Starting point is the relationship between architecture, artworks and the body of the visitor. The visitor is invited to try different positions on a number of marked places and can contribute new positions. This leads to an accumulating collection of re-positionings.
Concept: Sara Wookey and Rennie Tang

3. This is not a space - Audible Architecture

The architecture of the Van Abbemuseum building and the exhibition both impact how the visitor experiences the works of art. This is not a space is an audible fictional layer superimposed on the physical surroundings. It gradually becomes an unquestioned part of the architecture. The illusion of new space draws the visitor through the exhibition along unanticipated ways, so as to experience surprising moments of confrontation, recognition and contemplation.
Concept: Ricky van Broekhoven of SoundShapeLab.

4. Inhaling Art - Scented art

With Inhaling Art you are confronted with your most under-emphasized sensory experience: the sense of smell. Normally the museum is a place where one only uses his sense of sight to look at works of art. By means of specially developed smells accompanying various works of art, it becomes possible to enter into an intimate relationship with the collection. Warm, spicy aromas and synthetic compositions of smells alternate with each other and you can literally inhale art. The do it yourself tour guides people to several locations in the new building of the museum were scent units are installed.
Concept: Caro Verbeek (art and aroma historian) in cooperation with Jorg Hempenius (aroma jockey)

5. Qwearing the Collection - Perspective from garments

Qwearing the Collection explores how a queer perspective can be used to change the experience of the museum and the art on display in it, therefore provoking further thoughts and analysis from the visitors. Using the term queer in its broad sense of otherness and fluidity opens to analyze any cultural archive from an intersectional standpoint, and shedding new light into the white cube of the museum space.
Qwearing the Collection consists of two main elements: firstly the questioning of relevant artworks and situations of the main art collection taking place on five informative garments through text and image. Secondly an introduction and contextualisation of the queer terms that are used in the enquiry which can be found and investigated on the scarfs. They both come together in the experience where the audience are invited to browse through the collection.
Concept: Olle Lundin

Online Toolshop
Even online we provide different ways to discover our collection. Listen to observations from a diverse groep of people from Eindhoven in our Meerstemmige Collectie (mainly in Dutch). Or create your own Combinary and tell your own story by chosing artworks from our collection.