Suspended Histories – Museum Van Loon

The contemporary art exhibition looks at the relationship between the Van Loon family and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the 17th and 18th centuries. The title alludes to the dynamic processes of history being never finished, but is continually postponed, or ‘suspended’, in time and space, constantly analysed, judged and adjusted. The 11 artists, who are strongly related to the regions of the former colonies, were asked to explore in which ways history lives on and how it can be visualized in relation to the museum and to their own existence and background.

The fundamental grid underlying the items are based on the Mercator projection and rhumb lines applied in the Van Loon family atlas, by Willem Janszoon Blaeu, official cartographer of the VOC. Maps allow you to travel in your mind, not only in the present but also into the past. A map shows a moment in time but it is never final, it is always changing. When the catalogue lays open, the page spread uses the area, that the VOC would have sailed from the Netherlands to Asia. The colours are inspired by the hand colouring of the atlas and the interior of the house itself.