Centraal Museum — Attraction in Utrecht

I was hoping to spend my Sunday gazing into the works of Marlene Dumas, but instead my day was ruined. There was no clear warning on the website of the Museum, nor was I informed at the tickets office, when I asked for a ticket to see Marlene Dumas. Upon further investigation, you could eventually see that the museum's collection was closed, which I eventually realized, had the works of Marlene Dumas in it. In my opinion this information should be more accessible and more visible for pseudointelectuals like me. I do not have any idea of who curated the current expositions, that were on display at the moment, but I have never seen anything more atrocious in my life. Please hire some people who actually know how to do their job, because this was just embarrassing. I started my museum visit with the chair exhibition. I thought the chairs themselves were lovely, but I did miss a few classics. Although the way, in which the chairs were displayed was just horrible to say the least. It looked as if the space was designed firstly and only then the curators would put the chairs just wherever. Sure I did enjoy the chair-print wallpaper, the metal piping display but I thought it was extremely poorly executed. The first room was OK, the second was bad and the third, fourth and so on was a total abomination - the information about the design of the chairs was clashing so hard with the chair-print wallpaper my head started to hurt, the information about the designs was displayed very stupidly - at the floor of the platform - you could not read it if there was a lot of people around and my neck started hurting at the end of the exposition even though I am only 23. I could not imagine what did it feel like for people my parent's age; the chairs were exhibited very awkwardly, messily, were mushed togheter and were not photogenic at all - some of them were even shown on platforms made out of steel piping more than 3 meters above the ground, which I found very stupid, since not even Dutch people are that tall. Going trough the rooms looked like the coordinators lost their interest in this exhibition more and more and at the end there was another totally random exhibition which had no connection to the previous. Anyways, I thought it was quite embarrassing, it did not feel that the museum treated each chair as a work of art, but rather just wanted to make some money. Going onwards, on the first floor I had witnessed the most horrendous expo I have seen in my life, sincerely. I was wondering, was art in Eastern and Western Europe so different? Do I not know anything about contemporary art? Was it supposed to look that bad? so bad I could not believe that the museum would allow this? But after googling the artist's name, some things started to make sense. Turns out Manon Uphoff is not a visual, but a writer. Not even one painting shows up in the search when firstly googling her name. I have no Idea what she writes about, but I think she should stick to writing and leave the museum space for people who actually deserve it. Lastly, I did find the work of Pauline Curnier Jardin interesting, but I was still baffled by what I had seen previously and could not concentrate. Once again, the information about the work was unreadable in some rooms due to the red lighting. I don't think It's a problem that's hard to fix, but it looks very unprofessional. Thank you for your time please take note of my observations and...

Was hoping to see some Dutch masters and maybe some history of Utrecht. The old paintings were all crowded into one room, many behind display cases so you could not see them, and there was a brightly flashing purple plastic mannequin in the corner. The curator's agenda is not about old art or history. There was an app for listening to information about some of the art on your phone, but (i) there were no numbers or qr codes by the paintings so you had to try to find the correct category and scroll through the items on the phone to try to find the one for the painting you wanted and (ii) the narration was not about the artwork but about someone's personal feelings about it, different person for each artwork (for example, the first female gastroenterologist in Utrecht, or other prominent people with lived experience of injustice (but only injustice based on sexism against women, no other form of injustice allowed). For the above two reasons I managed to listen to only 3 of the items. Also, the museum has numerous coloured neon tube statements on the walls, which add considerable uglification to an otherwise handsome interior. In summary, the curator's agenda very strongly overpowers the collection and their agenda is tired and not iconoclastic as they seem to think....

Modern art (mostly media) museum combined with traditional Dutch paintings (interesting in my opinion). Most of the museum is undergoing a renovation, so there is not much to see, but still it is an interesting experience.

I was not a big fan of the video installations -- most of them depicted pain in one form or another. However one of them particularly made my trip to this museum worthwhile: the videos shot during the Congo civil war. I was very touched by what I saw, and the display of several screens in various angles of the room added to a different experience of the story. These videos were shout using an oldfashioned camera that was used during the war to exposed camouflaged soldiers, and it inverted green to pink. And so these videos are showing lots of bright pink. They are full of horrors, coffins, kids with guns, a new born being resuscitated, displacement camps in the middle of nowhere full of tents, people, children. It's hard not to be touched by these tragedies... I found myself almost crying after awhile, I had to get out. But what an experience that was! And what a perfect reminder to do your part in the world and to appreciate the heck out of...