Since 2017, Kunsthal in Rotterdam has been organising its “Naked Tour” every year with great success. The museum offers from time to time, to walk nude through the exhibition. Each time, the guided “Naked Tour” attracts more and more naturists.
Visitors as part of the mirrowing artwork | 1
This year, it took place on 28 September. The previously registered, approx. 60 visitors could visit the works of the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos undressed. Four museum guides explained the individual artworks to groups of younger and older nude visitors including a grandmother and her two granddaughters.
The exhibited works this time had no relation to the nude person or body, unlike so often on naturist guided tours through museums. They were oversized objects, with which the artist satirically mocked the “roles” of men and women in society – for example in a pair of high heels made of chrome kitchen pots or by transforming a helicopter, i.e. a typical “male” object, into an extremely feminine “lilicopter” with feminine attributes.
In the Netherlands, too, media interest in events, where you can be nude, is growing. This is already evident from the fact, that a photographer and a cameraman accompanied the naturists and Algemeen Dagblad, second largest newspaper of the Netherlands, reported about it in an article “In je blootje door de Kunsthal: kijken naar de expositie en een beetje naar elkaar” (ad.nl) on 29 September 2019. Already in 2018, the countrywide known presenter Lauren Verster informed about the Naked Tour in the Kunsthal at that time in her TV show “Lauren!”.
The discrepancy between the hard metal of the artwork and the soft construction of the human body renders visitors themselves part of the exhibition. A tram of line 23, which passes the museum just outside on Westzeedijk Street, also gives the impression, to be part of the artwork…
Triple art: Stilettos, bodies, tram | 3
We learned during our visit, that there shall be another “Naked Tour” in 2020 – natury will inform you.
– Report and photos: Rainer