A selection of the permanent collection and guest exhibitions
June 20 – September 20
In the West Wing, a selection from the permanent collection is on display, along with several guest exhibitors, including:
Theo de Feyter – Memories of the Jan Steenzolder
Fransix Tenda Lomba – The Bittersweet Taste of Chocolate
Peter de Wit – Growing Pains
Mari Shields –Unwanted Species and Friends
20 June – 20 September 2026
Eight years ago, visual artist and archaeologist Theo de Feyter (1947) moved into a house with a studio on Tweede Jan Steenstraat in De Pijp, a neighborhood in Amsterdam. In doing so, he followed in the footsteps of Leo Gestel, Jan Sluijters, Mommie Schwarz, Else Berg, Willem den Ouden, Jan Mensinga, Peter Vos, and other artists who had previously lived there. In 1904, Gestel was the first artist to take up residence in the rooms of the old hayloft, which has since become known as “The Jan Steen Attic” and long served as the “headquarters” of modern movements in the Netherlands: Fauvism, Cubism, and the Expressionism of the Bergen School. With only brief interruptions, the space has remained in use as an artists’ studio up to the present day.
Not only the famous artists who lived and gathered there, but also the many objects they left behind, made the Jan Steen Attic a remarkable place. When Theo de Feyter moved into the building, he discovered clothing, furniture, tools, suitcases, plaster molds, and more than two hundred letters, photographs, and books from the 1920s. They form silent witnesses to the attic’s extraordinary history and its inhabitants. De Feyter used these found objects as the starting point for a series of drawings. He combined them with his own belongings, linking the artistic past and present in a series of still lifes. Extensive research in archives, image banks, and collections ultimately resulted in his book The House of the Artists – The Painters of the Jan Steen Attic.
This room presentation features a selection of De Feyter’s recent still lifes shown in conjunction with objects discovered in the attic.
20 June — 20 September 2026
Visual artist Fransix Tenda Lomba (1984) grew up in Congo and studied at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, the city where he has lived and worked ever since. His multidisciplinary oeuvre includes drawings, paintings, sculptures, and animated videos. Important themes in his work are colonial history and postcolonial society, the economic relationships between Africa and the West, and the way raw materials such as cocoa create global networks of power and dependency.
In his work, he combines well-known logos with motifs derived from African and Western visual traditions, and he paints historical figures who appear to be drenched in chocolate.
In this room presentation, Fransix Tenda Lomba presents works in which his personal history and that of his country of birth form the point of departure. Cocoa and chocolate serve as symbols of connection between continents, between past and present, between production and consumption, and ultimately between people.
20 June — 20 September 2026
In this room presentation, Museum Belvédère showcases a wide selection from the new series of drawings by Peter de Wit (1958). Growing Pains consists of a multitude of stories-within-a-single-image, in which the artist, with gentle humor, captures the friction that can arise nowadays between young and old. The playful variations in styles and visual solutions — the continual search for new possibilities by this master of the sparse yet clear line — make the series a fascinating and engaging visual adventure.
In his foreword to the book Growing Pains, published alongside the exhibition, Peter de Wit wrote:
“In the comic strip Sigmund, which I create daily for de Volkskrant, children appear on a regular basis. I greatly enjoy inventing painful and funny situations involving parents lovingly struggling with raising children and with the magical world of childhood. Sitting at the drawing table, memories naturally resurface from the time when I myself was young. (…) Of course, I also think back to the early years of my own children. To all the experiences, the happiness, and the worries you share as parents. And now that I may call myself a grandfather, I once again witness all the stages of childhood up close. (…) I can no longer draw with the carefree spontaneity of a child, but the pleasure and intensity were no less for it. They have become bitter-sweet, painful, loving, moving, and humorous drawings of situations that, I believe, are recognizable to all of us. After all, we have all been children, and I have noticed that growing pains continue throughout an entire lifetime.”
June 20 – September 20
Sculptures by the American sculptor and installation artist Mari Shields (Bangor, Maine, USA, 1948) are on view in the Museum Park and the west wing of Museum Belvédère. With deep respect for nature and craftsmanship, Shields creates public monuments in honour of trees. She works exclusively with trees that have reached the end of their life cycle due to old age, disease, or other natural circumstances. In dialogue with the outdoor sculptures, each carved from a single Northern red oak (Quercus rubra) — a tree species once widely appreciated but now regarded as invasive — the American black cherry (Prunus serotina) is one of the principal materials featured in this presentation. This species, too, has spread extensively and disrupts native ecosystems.
Shields also worked with Scotch laburnum (Laburnum alpinum), valued for its naturally dark heartwood. The remaining works are made from beech, elm, European oak, and black locust.
Oranje Nassaulaan 70
8453 HA Oranjewoud
0513-644999
info@museumbelvedere.nl
