Delinking and Relinking

^{Please note that from 3 March to 26 April 2025, Delinking and Relinking will be closed temporarily}

Experience art by smelling, touching, hearing and seeing

Multi-sensory collection presentation

Featuring 120 artworks, the Delinking and Relinking collection presentation spans all five floors of the museum's collection wing. You will travel over five floors of the Van Abbemuseum’s collection building from the last century to the present day. It takes you on a journey into the lives of artists and their artworks. The exhibition 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. 

The exhibition shows how artists respond to different cultures and how they struggle with the great questions of their time. It shows how their artworks are directly linked to what they see, feel and experience around them. Mostly inspiring and occasionally confrontational, Delinking and Relinking spans more than a century of art history, with Compositie XIV by Piet Mondriaan 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).

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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

Delinking and Relinking catalogue

The long-awaited catalogue of this exhibition was released at the end of 2024. In it, curators Diana Franssen and Steven ten Thije take you through this multidisciplinary approach to a museum collection. They explain the structure of the exhibition and focus on the relationships between artists, artworks and social themes. The text by ‘expert by experience’ Barbara Strating offers a critical and illuminating account of this process. There is also a contribution from The Office of Queer Affairs, a network of people interested in sexuality and gender issues. The third text is a personal reflection by researcher and journalist Reggie Baay on the significance of the museum's colonial origins. We conclude with a reflection by director Charles Esche, who discusses what concepts such as ‘demodernisation’ and ‘decolonisation’ mean for the museum going forward.

Participating artists

Tjong Ang, Willem Adams, Karel Appel, Rasheed Araeen, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Gam Bodenhausen, Boudry / Lorenz, stanley brouwn, Jean Brusselmans, Marc Chagall, Chryssa, Céline Condorelli, René Daniëls, Hanne Darboven, Ad Dekkers, Rineke Dijkstra, Marlene Dumas, Max Ernst, Lucio Fontana, Nilbar Güreş, Lubaina Himid, Isaac Israëls, Sanja Iveković, Patricia Kaersenhout, Gülsün Karamustafa, Karrabing Film Collective, Toon Kelder, Iris Kensmil, John Körmeling, Theo Kuijpers, Wifredo Lam, Fernand Léger, El Lissitzky, Lucebert, Joan Miró, László Moholy Nagy, Piet Mondriaan, Nabuurs&VanDoorn, Ahmet Ögüt, Otobong Nkanga, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Rodan Omomá, Gabriel Orozsco, Pieter Ouborg, Alicia Penalba, Constant Permeke, Stijn Peeters, Pablo Picasso, Wim van der Plas, Marjetica Potrc, Laure Prouvost, Michael Rakowitz, Gé Röling, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jan Schoonhoven, Ad Snijders, Mariëlle Soons, Pieter Stoop, Lily van der Stokker, Elly Strik, Koki Tanaka, Charley Toorop, Roy Villevoye, Evi Vingerling, Henk Visch, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Ossip Zadkine and Qui Zhijie.