Rotterdam, the cultural commitment for 2024

Rotterdam is the city in the Netherlands that leads the country's economic activity, mainly due to having the port that moves the most containers in Europe and one of the largest in the world; shows a spectacular skyline of avant-garde skyscrapers, and, every year, it disputes primacy in the cultural sector with Amsterdam, which already feels its breath on the neck. And precisely, the new exhibitions in museums and art galleries in Rotterdam are the greatest attraction for a visit in this upcoming 2024, in addition to knowing or seeing again the latest buildings designed by the best architects.

Thus, the most relevant cultural landmark this winter in the port city is the largest anthological exhibition dedicated to the Chinese artist and activist exiled in London Ai Weiwei. An exhibition that includes installations, paintings, dioramas that illustrate his detention by the Chinese authorities or photographs in several rooms of the attractive Kunsthal, the Art Museum, and that covers everything from his first works to his latest creations.

In search of humanity, a concept that Ai Weiwei seems hesitant to finally find, brings together four decades of artistic expressions from his works in connection with his childhood in China, the repression suffered by his family in a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution, imprisonment for six years of his father, the poet Ai Qing, or the exile in the Xinjiang region, to his reflections and denunciations captured in Ming-style vases where the images of walkers in the African desert or the shipwrecked of the boats replace the peasants and mandarins in the idyllic landscapes of ancient rural China. A large serpent zigzags over those attending the exhibition, made from a thousand student backpacks rescued from under the rubble of collapsed schools – and which should have survived if they had been built with the necessary safety measures – during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which caused some 90,000 dead and missing in this region of the Asian country. In search of humanity It will remain at the Kunsthal until March 4 and is a must-see on a visit to Rotterdam in these months.

Besides, the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedama municipality adjacent to the westernmost neighborhoods of Rotterdam and just a few minutes away by public transport from the center, is scheduling the exhibition on The Dutch years (1966-1970) by Yayoi Kusama, a period in which the Japanese artist born in 1929 was a reference of the Provo countercultural movement. The three main obsessions recognized by Kusama as driving forces of her art and causing disgust that arose in hallucinations suffered in childhood: sex, flowers and… macaroni! All three materialize in installations and collages in several rooms of the museum: designs of dresses with fragments of Italian pasta attached, sculptures formed with accumulations of penises and the proliferation of another of Kusama's fixations – voluntarily confined in a mental health center in Japan since the seventies, where he leaves whenever he can to work for a few hours. Also the colored polka dots on fashion creations, mannequins or even painted live on the naked body of other artists, as shown in the photos of the happenings of those sixties in galleries in Amsterdam and other cities in the Netherlands and that scandalized a large part of a society as liberal as the Dutch.

After completing your visit to the Stedelijk, a beautiful building that housed a hospital at the end of the 18th century located in the historic center of the city and very close to the shore of a canal, it is a good idea to stroll along the tree-lined quays of the Lange Haven canal and It is a delight to observe the housing barges docked in the canal, a sight that is repeated in several cities in the Netherlands, as well as the 18th century buildings that flank it. And you should not miss the interesting street on this street National Jenever Museum, Dutch gin; Even today you can see how it has been distilled in this building since 1700, much of whose production is exported to other parts of the planet. In addition, the museum is hosting an exhibition until February 25 on the use of valuable Delft blue pottery in this industry.

Back in the city center, the Boijmans van Beuningen, the city's main art museum, will remain closed for renovation at least until 2028, so some of its works can be seen in the Depot, an impressive building inaugurated in 2021 in the Museumpark, next to the old Boijmans. Only a small percentage of the 150,000 canvases, sculptures and design objects transferred from the lavish museum are on display and, therefore, you should not miss the highlights of the collection: until March 24 there are 14 works by Hieronymus Hieronymus, Titian, Kandinsky, Monet, Mondriaan or Basquiat, and from that day on there will be up to 70 masterpieces that will be exhibited on the fifth floor. But it is also very interesting to know the large rooms where the works are stored and their restoration processes. And, of course, what will surprise most travelers most about this visit will be the building itself, 40 meters high in the shape of a cup, 15,000 square meters of space for the storage of its artistic treasures and whose façade It is covered with reflective glass.

Furthermore, until January 14, in a room on the upper floor that is accessed by glass elevators or stairs between large display cases, they exhibit designs of objects from the most ancient cultures: Chinese porcelain, Mesopotamian vessels… even designer furniture. from the end of the 20th century or a medieval canvas compared to that of a surrealist painter. Host the sample Art among the ruins, which illustrates how Rotterdam artists survived (and some collaborated) in the years following the bombing that destroyed the city in 1940, during the Nazi occupation. From those who painted oils with neutral themes that did not offend the occupiers, the most popular were landscapes, “a theme that never bothered the Nazis,” according to a museum guide, to those who went so far as to insert a tiny and almost imperceptible swastika in the middle. of a picture of desolation, as a kind of denunciation invisible to the censorship.

In a city that had to be reborn from its ashes at the end of World War II and that became richer in the following years thanks largely to the activity of its Europoort, whose activity has only been surpassed in the world since 2004 by the ports of Shanghai and Singapore, it is highly recommended to undertake a visit to the largest maritime entry and exit point in Europe, with a length of 42 kilometers and an area of ​​105 square kilometers. The Spido company offers several daily cruises lasting an hour and a half that tour the port, at the mouths of the Rhine and Meuse rivers, and set sail next to the Erasmus bridge. Throughout 2024, the inauguration of the new Port Atlantis information center is scheduled for Maasvlakte 2, a piece of land reclaimed from the North Sea at the westernmost end of the superport, an avant-garde project, “a machine to show the incredible world of Europoort,” according to Winy Maas, founding partner of MVRVD, the architecture firm that won the competition for the project.

Those interested in avant-garde architecture can enjoy a series of lavish buildings and skyscrapers in Rotterdam on a walk through the center and neighborhoods of the city: the aforementioned Depot, the Central Station, the iconic Cubic Houses… Also the Markthal, located opposite, a striking arch whose interior dome with beautiful murals of flowers and fruits, encompasses a beautiful food market – it is better to stick to the stalls selling traditional and local products: cheeses, jenever, chocolates… in many others the food It stands out for its quality, and on which 200 apartments are clustered. Other options are the impressive pavilion that McDonald's occupies in Coolsingel, the work of architect Robert Winkel; the Stock Exchange and the World Trade Center; the imposing Willemswerf, headquarters of the shipping company Maersk, or take a look at the progress of the works on the futuristic building that will houseto the FENIX Museum of Immigrationwhose inauguration will be in 2025, an amazing metallic spiral inserted in a maritime warehouse from the 1920s of the Holland America Line on the lower bank of the Meuse.

And, above all, to disconnect if the visitor to Rotterdam feels overwhelmed by such intense cultural life, next summer will witness the opening of the RiF010 Urban Surfing. It is a center for surfing in the Steigersgracht area, right in the center, in a sector of another of the country's ubiquitous canals and where you can also ride the waves in kayaks or bareback and even have fun on a circuit of surfing. rafting.

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