Opening Museum as Sundial

What if a museum could function like a sundial?

On saturday October 17th, during Dutch Design Week, Museum as Sundial takes one of humanity’s oldest technologies for orientation as both its starting point and its organising principle. A sundial connects sky and ground, translating the movement of the sun into shifting patterns of light and shadow.

Ninety years ago, the Van Abbemuseum’s original 1936 building was designed in relation to the sun. Museum as Sundial returns to this architectural condition to ask how a museum might help us reorient ourselves amid profound social, technological, and ecological change.

Together with artists, designers and system thinkers: Ana María Millán, ADEZIV Network, Ayumi Paul, EDHV, Kiki & Joost, Adele Dipasquale, Gala Porras-Kim, Michael Portnoy, Paul Panhuysen, Ayumi Paul, Ei Arakawa-Nash and John Körmeling. Archival and collection material includes works from the Rhoda Kellogg International Child Art Collection, the Karin and Bernd Fessel ABC artist books for children, the National Archive of Brabant Folk Songs, and mandala drawings by Anne Frank on loan from Anne Frank Huis. Spatial design is by Studio Diogo Passarinho, with a graphic design intervention by Studio Remco van Bladel.

Programme

• 14:00 Opening speech by Defne Ayas
• 14:30 Ayumi Paul and the Van Abbemuseum Choir
• 15:30 Michael Portnoy, The Fifth Place
• 16:00 End of programme
• All day from 11am to 5pm pop-up Honey Honey Tattoo