Veranderland (a combination of the Dutch words for ‘change’ and ‘land’) lets you experience the constantly changing landscape of Brabant through two hundred years of art.
The first museum gallery presents an open cube of steel that can also be found in the courtyard garden, but now without the plants. It marks the starting point of the exhibition and symbolizes the straightforwardness of modern man. Inspired by a cartoon by American artist Saul Steinberg, in which a man looks out at a landscape from the same cube, you are faced with a choice. Will you step into the cube and let a need for order and demarcation guide your gaze? Or step off the beaten track and see yourself as part of the changing landscape?
The idea of the cube and human control over nature is also palpable in the exhibition design. Drapes deprive you of the view of the art works or, on the contrary, allow specific vistas. They have all been hung in an exact north-south or east-west direction. Just as maps have a grid, which allows you to find the coordinates of a place, the drapes also form a system that is, as it were, laid over the exhibition’s floor plan. This explains why they sometimes make strange angles and hang in the way. A logic imposed from the design determines our movements. The alternation of natural jute and plastic reinforces the idea that we have a choice to make: to follow nature or to put humans first.
