The Kröller-Müller Museum — Anne Geene
Accumulation of Things
On view from 25 September, 2021 until 6 June, 2022
As a part of their Vestibulum series, Kröller-Müller Museum holds a solo show Accumulation of Things by Anne Geene. For Vestibulum 4, Geene takes a look at the collection method of Helene KröllerMüller, the museum’s founder. Helene considered her collection closed, the collection had to remain a self-contained whole. But can ‘a carefully selected succession of works of art’ ever be complete? In Vestibulum 4, the central theme is the human urge to collect, and Geene examines concepts such as possession, completeness, selection, and desire.
Anne Geene counts, measures, inventories and photographs nature. She collects leaves, twigs, stones and pine needles, as well as pictures of birds, beetles and pieces of tree bark, according to their peculiarities, and then analyses and organises them according to an apparent logic. ‘Coincidence is more important than continuity’, as she says herself. She looks for visual similarities or patterns, repetitions and minor deviations, which she then interprets and catalogs according to strictly personal criteria.
She examined the area around the Kröller-Müller Museum for over a year. Whatever got in her way or caught her eye, she picked up or captured with her camera. From minuscule leaves of clover or ground-ivy to colour markings on trees and blue skies above the Veluwe. She also photographed trees with girth greater than one and a half metres (trees that were probably already there when Helene Kröller-Müller had built her museum). And she found a collection of another creature: a squirrel’s collection of acorns. In Accumulation of things, Geene shows the environment of the museum through insignificant things such as pieces of rubble, blades of grass, sand or eaten leaves, presented together in a contemporary cabinet of curiosities.
Installation shot the Kröller-Müller Museum
The Kröller-Müller Museum
25 September, 2021 – 6 June, 2022
Houtkampweg 6
6731 AW Otterlo
Monday 12.00-17.00
Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays 10.00-17.00
see on the Kröller-Müller Museum’s website