studio Donna van Milligen Bielke

Exhibition: New Horizons
Date: June 30 to Aug 27 2023
Location: Centraal Museum Utrecht
pictures: Gert Jan de Rooij
Spatial design: Studio Donna van Milligen Bielke, Ard de Vries Architects,
curator: Laurie Cluitmans 

Throughout history, artists have sought to expand their boundaries and explore new horizons. In the seventeenth century, many Utrecht artists travelled to Italy, where they drew inspiration from the landscape and their Italian peers. After returning to Utrecht they introduced a new style of painting: landscape vistas with an Italian-Mediterranean quality of light, evocative of a sultry summer day. The exhibition New Horizons starts from the era of the Italianate painters to examine how contemporary artists and makers relate to the theme of journeying through a landscape. Works can be about experiencing a landscape, or about travelling towards a particular goal, or instead about what is called ‘wanderlust’: travelling without a destination in mind. It is an exhibition about inspiration, and about finding it close to home or instead far away. Journeying through a landscape remains an important theme and a source of inspiration, but images are not limited to idyllic scenes. The landscape is also the backdrop to themes like forced migration and the climate crisis.