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Best Building of 2022: "Stimulating all the senses, that's what we want"

Singer Laren was recently renovated, renewed and expanded to include the art collection of Jaap and Els Blokker. MASTERS spoke to directors Jan Rudolph de Lorm and Evert van Os. "We are at a higher level, have more space, a much better collection ... Now the game begins!"
Portretfotografie John van Helvert

The renovated museum has now been open for several weeks. What are the reactions?

Van Os: "The visitors are unanimously enthusiastic. That the world is open again, that the museums are open again, that this wonderful collection is here and that the building has become so beautiful. The art critics are very positive. And, of course, we have received a great compliment with being voted BNA Best Building of the Year 2022."

It was opened on March 8 by Princess Beatrix. What did she think of it?

Van Os: "Beatrix has visited our museum many times in the past. During the opening she whispered that she hardly recognized it again. At the farewell she told us that she thought the museum had become so beautiful."

Which innovations are you personally most pleased with?

De Lorm: "With which not, you'd better ask. I find ugliness very difficult, that bothers me. Thanks to the architects, everything has been made beautiful. From my point of view, the museum should be an ideal medium to bring art as close to the people as possible. They have succeeded so incredibly well in that. And they have not only realized this new hall complex, but by extension they have renovated the entire museum and made it aus einem Guss. All the halls are finished the same way and have the same kind of proportion. I think it has become a pretty perfect exhibition machine."
Van Os: "We have finally made Singer Laren into one whole, with a renovated theater, a central entrance, a beautiful sculpture garden by Piet Oudolf and now, as the final piece, the renovated museum."

Nothing more to do?

De Lorm: "Well, it starts now. We don't have to do anything more to the building and interior, but we have to start playing the carillon now. So we need to get as many exhibitions, in a new dynamic, playing in the next few years."

There wasn't much to play for the past two years. Was it a stroke of luck that the renovation coincided with the corona era?

Van Os: "We should not pretend that corona has been a blessing, but within the circumstance we were able to make good use of the time by rebuilding. Because we hadn't planned that to that extent. We actually weren't supposed to begin the remodeling and renovation of the existing museum galleries until after the summer of 2022. We brought those forward and thus made smart use of time."
De Lorm: "It was quite an uncertain time and Evert immediately went rock solid in his advancement. Not alone, but he has been very much the engine in that. He took advantage of the circumstances in a very good way."

Most museum innovations result in modern eye-catchers, such as Boijmans Van Beuningen's mirrored depot and the "cloud" atop De Fundatie. Singer Laren is not joining that trend?

De Lorm: "No. We went through quite a few architectural firms when we had Mrs. Blokker's assurance that we could build. With the theater, we already had a distinctive building made in comparison to the rest of the complex. We wanted to remain in harmony with the villa from which the museum was built in 1956 by architect Wouter Hamdorff and use that formal language, volumes and materialization as our guide."

Van Os: "Our starting point was not the architecture per se, but the collection and the visitor. Many a museum focuses on a distinctive building, but forgets that it also has to contain art. And that does not always come into its own within such unusual architecture."

De Lorm: "When I worked at the Rijksmuseum (from 1990 to 2001 as curator of Gold and Silver and from 2002 to 2009 Head of Exhibitions; ed.), I made Rijksmuseum Schiphol. The whole approach of then director Ronald de Leeuw was, 'You have to be surrounded by art.' It's about the art, you have to put it on a pedestal.' Singer Laren has very beautiful halls. They were admittedly a bit run down, but we wanted to keep the volumes and rhythm that way rather than build a wing to them that would stand out like a cathedral against the other rooms. A continuous, unified exhibition circuit throughout the museum, starting with the old halls and ending at the end of the new halls, that was really the goal. Several architects gave presentations and there were those who did show distinctive additions. We chose the harmonious line of Bedaux de Brouwer Architects. Because they have existed as a firm for a hundred years, they have learned to study very carefully the initial architecture first. Wouter Hamdorff's architecture resulted in a very beautiful clear museum. From that clarity, they took us into their plan. They didn't build something new, they added something."

Van Os: "The garden room where we sit now is architecture in the finest sense. With that, they set their signature. They looked at the villa with that warm look and made a modern version of it."
De Lorm: "They are brick architects, which fits with the construction we already have. They work with honest materials such as oak, natural stone, brass... All materials that age beautifully, have a certain warm look and are also found in the villa. Of course, it is not by chance that we chose them."

The new wing was needed to accommodate the donated collection of Els and Jaap Blokker. How were you able to acquire the collection for the museum?

De Lorm: "Singer has a large number of supporters, people who support us financially, but who also see the museum somewhat as their second home. The people of Laren like to come here and come here often; it's a kind of cultural living room. Jaap and Els Blokker belonged to that group of supporters for a long time. When I came here in 2009, I immediately met them in the villa, where they had their regular table. After Jaap Blokker passed away, I went to see their collection by invitation and immediately made it known that I would very much like to do something with it sometime. The relationship with Mrs. Blokker only intensified over time. Gradually our desire, which we had made known to some extent anyway, and her idea of giving the collection, or at least parts of it, a permanent place here, crossed paths."

Els Blokker lives within walking distance of the museum. Will you bring cakes with you when you go on an interview?

Van Os: "At some point we knew the time was right and we went to see her. Not with cakes, but with a booklet in which we had visualized our dream. It told us what that wing could look like, how it could be a home for her collection and also what the financial implications were."
De Lorm: "When I first saw the Nardinc Collection, a coherent collection of 117 works, I really thought: this is the best thing not to be found in Singer. And it perfectly matched the existing collection of the American founders. Impressionism is well represented in our museum, and we had a little bit of modernism - that was more like catching up, because Anna and William Singer had never collected that. Jaap and Els Blokker's collection contains the pinnacle of Dutch modernism, museum quality. I am also really overjoyed that it turned out this way and that everyone can see it. The collection is being embraced by the public. We live in a very dark moment and this is a collection that is about color, cheerfulness, exuberance and freedom, letting go of rules, letting your feelings speak. We get personal messages from quite a lot of visitors asking us to forward them to Mrs. Blokker, that they are really very grateful to her."

Van Os: "Els Blokker ultimately wanted not only to donate the collection, but also to co-finance its preservation and housing. Because, she said, you get over the dog then you also get over the tail. All without further conditions except one: the extension was not to be called the Blokker wing."

De Lorm: "We named that one the Nardinc wing, after the name of the collection and the former Nardinclant estate of the Blockers."

What kind of price tag was attached to the renovation?

Van Os: "Calculated from 2017, the year the new theater hall and entrance foyer were realized, it totals about 23 million euros. Of that, just under 20 million has been donated by individuals and cultural funds."

As a private museum, do you lean heavily on donations?

Van Os: "Our operation consists of 4 percent subsidy and 96 percent audience revenue. This allows us to keep our own pants on. The donations make renovations, investments in the building and collection expansions possible. So these are indispensable for us to keep up with the times."

 

The new garden room: suitable for meetings and events

Jan Rudolph, what for you are the gems from the Nardinc Collection?

De Lorm: "As a curator, it is so nice when you can add really important art historical moments to the collection. Like Café de nuit (Café Olympia), the first of three large paintings Jan Sluijters made in Paris at exactly the time that future fauvists like Picasso and Kees van Dongen first presented their work at the Salon des Indépendants in April 1906. The other two works hang at the Stedelijk, Bal Tabarin, and the Van Gogh Museum, Femmes qui s'embrassent. So an important momentum in the birth of modernism can be permanently displayed here. But it also tells of the new city of light, Paris, the medieval city totally transformed in the nineteenth century - the new going out, the new freedoms of man. A delightful work to have! Jan Toorop's The evening before the work strike (1888) is also a gamechanger: it is one of the first pointillist paintings in the Netherlands. Another gem, also by Sluijters, is Larens landschap met fietsers from 1911: a humanistic landscape with a soccer field, telegraph poles, electricity poles and cycling women, painted in bright unmixed colors. In that work, a sense of beauty and a sense of time coincide. He painted it during his three-year stay at the artists' colony in Laren, Villa Vita Nuova on Hilversumseweg. And the collection contains another key work by Jan Sluijters: Portrait of Greet van Cooten, from 1910. Our face of modernism. Evert affectionately calls her the "Mona Lisa of Singer. With 41 new works by Jan Sluijters, we are now the Dutch museum with the most paintings by his hand."

How important is it to showcase artists who have a link to Laren?

De Lorm: "We call the artists' colony in Laren, Blaricum and a part of Huizen, to which many artists came from 1870 onwards, 'holy ground'. It was the first time since the seventeenth century that the Netherlands again produced art in an original way and at a high level, and immediately caused a sensation internationally. As a result, Americans came to this area, including William Singer. But also Max Liebermann, the greatest German Impressionist, spent numerous summers here; Max Beckmann, the greatest German Expressionist; Piet Mondrian, who practiced Luminism here with Jan Sluijters and Leo Gestel... All these developments in art around 1900 took place here to a large extent. To show it in the place where it happened, in the environment that is still there, that is of course a shot across the bow. Els Blokker has made that possible."

 

MASTERS MAGAZINE

Want to read more of the interview? In the summer edition of MASTERS, an interview with Sven Kramer, a driving impression of the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport and an examination of Max's Effect. But above all, it features people who bring light into the darkness. Like Henk Jan Beltman, who took over Tony's Chocolonely because with a business you can make the world a more beautiful place. Chef Emile van der Staak, who has the ambition to change our food culture and therefore cooks with plants and vegetables sourced from the food forest. Designer Nienke Hoogvliet, who has introduced natural seaweed paint as an alternative to harmful textile dyes. And Anna Nooshin, who denounces the current social media culture of pretty pictures. In her documentary, she also shares the less beautiful aspects of her life. All of them people who ask questions, present mirrors, make steps. Steps toward a healthier world and more understanding society.

 

MASTERS #50