From shipwreck artifacts to everyday trash, Below the Surface is a digital archive for centuries of human detritus, all exhumed from an Amsterdam canal.
Amsterdam
Posted inArt
Giant Keith Haring Mural Revealed Nearly 30 Years After It Was Covered Up
Painted in 1986, the mural was covered up with aluminum siding three years later and has only just been brought back to light.
Posted inIn Brief
Amsterdam Airbnb Host Shoves South African Filmmaker Down Staircase
Sibahle Nkumbi had gone to the Netherlands to write about an exhibition by the artist Zanele Muholi, who posted a video of the attack on Instagram.
Posted inArt
World’s Largest Street Art Museum Takes Shape in Amsterdam
Curator Peter Ernst Coolen discusses his plans for a street art museum in a former shipbuilding warehouse in north Amsterdam.
Posted inArt
In Amsterdam’s Red Light District, Street Artists Tell Tourists: “No Fucking Photos”
Though Amsterdam’s sex workers have long reprimanded tourists attempting to take pictures of them, doing some has become much harder in the age of the smartphone.
Posted inIn Brief
Rijksmuseum Asks Visitors to Stop Taking Photos and Start Sketching the Art
The Rijksmuseum’s new #StartDrawing campaign encourages visitors to slow down and sketch the works they see in the galleries instead of photographing them and moving on to the next thing.
Posted inArt
New Permanent Installation Blooms at the Rijksmuseum
When the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam debuted its renovated Philips Wing in November, curious modern flora bloomed over its 18th-century staircase.
Posted inIn Brief
Dutch Pranksters Punk Museumgoers with IKEA Art
In a playful prank on some art viewers, a roughly €10 work of IKEA art was placed in the galleries of the Museum Arnhem in the Netherlands, where visitors bestowed praise on the impostor.
Posted inIn Brief
Artist Banned from Stedelijk Museum for Threatening to Piss on the Art
The Dutch artist Rob van Koningsbruggen has been banned for life from the Stedelijk Museum after repeatedly threatening to relieve himself on works at the Amsterdam institution.
Posted inNews
A Dying Wish to See Rembrandt Paintings, Fulfilled
After hours this week at the Rijksmuseum’s Late Rembrandt exhibition, which focuses on the artist’s final years, three terminally ill patients viewed the paintings in solitude.
Posted inArt
Why Don’t People Get the New Stedelijk?
Dissing the Stedelijk Museum’s new Mels Crouwel–designed wing, New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman off-handedly compared the building to a “ridiculous” bathroom tub that suggested to him the sensation of “hearing Bach played by a man wearing a clown suit.” On the speed-rail ride back to Paris from a visit to the Amsterdam institution, it occurred to me that he completely got it wrong. Mels Crouwel did not give the museum a tub; he gave it a captivating sarcophagus, an often tub-shaped funeral receptacle designed to hold a corpse. And that is as it should be. After all, modernism is long dead.
Posted inOpinion
Actors Restage Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” in Mall
A thief in a garish feathered hat runs out of a shopping mall store with a leather bag clutched in his hand. He jumps down the stairs and tries desperately to escape as ropes descend down the mall’s atrium. Guards emerge to catch the criminal — but they’re on horseback, dressed in brimmed caps, and decked out with ruffled collars. A regiment of guards on foot marches toward the thief with halberds outstretched. After they catch the would-be escapee, a frame falls from the ceiling of the mall and brackets a view of proud policemen: This is Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch.”