From the outside, the shopping centre may look a little spooky, says Bart van den Boom, curator of the art project and UM alumnus. “But once you are inside, you notice that the whole atmosphere has changed and you feel like you are in a museum.” And that in the very place where the Bonnefanten Museum was once housed, he remarks.
On this Monday evening, he has organised a tour for a group of students from the master’s of Arts and Heritage (FASoS), who will man the information stand at the exhibition for the next few weeks. Together, they pass by the 21 video works filling the empty shop windows. The artists – including former and present students from the Maastricht Art Academy and the Institute of Performing Arts – made their videos in Amsterdam to Johannesburg and from São Paulo to Jakarta.
“The works of art are a window into another city, time and world,” says Van den Boom. “They connect Maastricht with the rest of the planet and show us a different way of looking at the city. Moreover, this fits in with the international character of Maastricht. Inhabitants from the countries in the exhibition will most likely recognise a lot in the videos.”
This is not the first group exhibition in a public space for Van den Boom. Under the heading of Viewmaster Projects, he already organised similar exhibitions in Maastricht between 2010 and 2014. “Because of the banking crisis, there were a lot of vacant buildings in those days. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I thought: ‘This is the time to get things started again’. Although it was more difficult this time to find vacant buildings than I thought it would be.”
Nevertheless, he managed to fill twenty shop windows. To a large extent in Entre Deux, but also in the surrounding streets in the city centre. After the tour, the students react enthusiastically. “That is nice,” says Van den Boom. “Not just because they can share that enthusiasm with the visitors later on, but also because they are becoming acquainted with art outside the museum.”