Museum Rijswijk is the winner of the Agnes van den Brandeler Museum Prize 2020. The prize, worth 50 thousand euros, is awarded annually to a small to medium-sized Dutch museum that comes up with a special plan for a solo exhibition. This year the jury selected an exhibition proposal by curator Diana Wind. She will make an extensive solo with earlier work and new projects by the Dutch artist Jasper de Beijer (1973) at Museum Rijswijk.
De Beijer will make a large, new installation in the new wing of the museum. The other spaces will be filled with earlier work by the artist; photo series, installations and videoworks. De Beijer makes carefully constructed and exhilarating photo works. As an image composer he disenchants the reality of the present and past – and creates a new, mysterious reality. In that reality he raises issues about cultural ethnicity, the elusive nature of history and the fictional aspects of the here and now.
The project proposal from Museum Rijswijk for Jasper de Beijer was selected by the jury of the Agnes van den Brandeler prize from a shortlist of museums. The jury, consisting of the board of the Agnes van den Brandeler Foundation – Frank Bergevoet, Robert de Haas and Koeno Sluyterman Van Loo – and supplemented by art critic Lucette ter Borg, finds de Beijers’ work committed, critical and stunningly beautiful. Museum Rijswijk is a small but high quality museum that has been presenting an interesting variety of exhibitions in recent years.
The Agnes van den Brandeler Museum Prize – instituted in 2018 – is an annual prize for medium-size and small museums. The prize is accompanied by an amount of 50,000 euros, intended for a project in which an artist (born before 1978) who, according to the taste of the jury, has been underexposed the past years. The prize is also intended as a financial stimulus for medium-size and small museums.
Damsel Agnes van den Brandeler (1918-2002) was a Dutch artist. Very much against the will of (especially) her father she decided to attend the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague after the completion of her high school. After the war, she traveled between 1947 and 1972 to France, Spain, Greece and Italy. She provided for her maintenance by painting, drawing and teaching. During her travels she became acquainted with impressionism, expressionism and constructivism and experimented between styles. In particular expressionism enthused her: she remained her whole life, even after returning to the Netherlands, making landscapes and history paintings in this style. During her life, Agnes van den Brandeler exhibited regularly – and funny detail: she had her debute in Museum Rijswijk –, but never broke through seriously. On the one hand she found that disappointing; on the other hand, she always dreaded “the social stuff”. The Agnes van den Brandeler Foundation – set up by herself and her husband – takes care of her artistic legacy and keeps the memory of this special, very energetic artist alive, among other things by the introduction of the annual AvdB prize.
Image: Jasper de Beijer, "Marabunta #08", 2012, C-print, 200 x 115 cm, Edition of 7.