Bonnefanten invites 27 guest curators to explore three collections
Editors ·
From 11 November, guest curators will select 270 works by 145 artists. The exhibition fills a floor and marks director Stijn Huijts’s departure.
Here, a fridge is a metaphor for three museum collections. In Cooking from the Fridge, the Bonnefanten invites 27 guest curators to choose from works acquired over the past 30 years by the Bonnefanten, SCHUNCK in Heerlen and Het Domein in Sittard. The exhibition opens on 11 November.
Together, the guest curators selected 270 works by 145 artists. The exhibition fills an entire floor and brings together painting, photography, film and video, installations and sculpture. The selection comes from collections that together comprise more than a thousand works.
The project was initiated by director Stijn Huijts, who is leaving after working at all three institutions: Het Domein (1996–2007), SCHUNCK (2007–2012) and the Bonnefanten (2012–2026). He left the selection to people whom the museum says played an important role in shaping his artistic vision over the past three decades.
The exhibition also includes a work whose title echoes its own: Jennifer Tee’s video Onions Attack! Jennifer in Defense (1998). It runs for almost seventeen minutes and belongs to the collection of Het Nieuwe Domein in Sittard. The selection therefore includes moving images as well as paintings.
A book with the same title will be published by nai010 Publishers. It includes essays by Sarah van Binsbergen, Edo Dijksterhuis, Hu Fang and Aaron Rose, alongside interviews with the guest curators. The book and exhibition follow the same route through the three collections: different voices decide what comes out of the “fridge”.
Cooking from the Fridge opens on 11 November 2026. The museum lists 5 September 2027 as the closing date.