It’s that time of year again when days feel longer, when we don’t leave our jobs after sunset, and can enjoy a drink with friends on the terrace of our favourite cafe. With that, our thirst — for cultural endeavours, that is — is naturally on the rise, too. And so, for all the culturally starved, we have compiled a list of exhibitions that are definitely worth visiting in the coming weeks and months.

WEAVING WATERS, WEAVING GESTURES

Claire Tabouret, The Last Day, 2016, Private Collection, courtesy of Museum Voorlinden

Dynamic brushstrokes and layered colour define the work of Claire Tabouret, each painting carrying its own quiet emotional weight. In her exhibition at Museum Voorlinden, she explores identity, childhood, and human connection through haunting, almost theatrical portraits and group compositions. Using a signature palette applied in thin layers, she blurs the line between reality and memory. Her figures seem caught between presence and distance. Some look directly at you, others remain more distant, yet all hold a quiet intrigue. Together, they create a layered portrait that reflects both her subjects and ourselves.

Weaving Waters, Weaving Gesturesruns from January 31 till May 25, 2026 at Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar.

BODY AS RESISTANCE

feature image:
© Yumna Al-Arashi, I Am Whoever You Want Me to Be, 2018, from the series I Am Who I Am Who Am I

Housed in the extravagant interiors of the Huis Marseille, Yemeni-Egyptian-American artist Yumna Al-Arashi is presenting her first solo exhibition, Body As Resistance. Through an extended variety of media– photography, books and sculptures– Al-Arashi creates pieces that fight against oppression and stereotyping as an ever-present theme of womanhood. She also puts this depiction through an Arab lens, focusing on how a legacy of colonialism has affected the region and broken down their matriarchal traditions. With pieces that feel undoubtedly personal, the exhibition offers a raw insight into this culture, dabbling between playful and defiantly provocative portrayals of the Arabic woman experience.

Body As Resistance runs from February 14 till June 21, 2026 at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam.

THE MINISTRY OF CERAMIC AFFAIRS II

photography by Jonathan de Waart, courtesy of Raam Art Space

The Ministry of Ceramic Affairs II, curated by Koos Buster at Raam Art Space is a playful institutional fiction where ceramics become both medium and mandate, and the show foregrounds clay’s capacity to be playful and subversive at the same time. This second edition showcases 23 artists pushing the boundaries of contemporary ceramics, featuring works like monster trucks, lucky cats, and even a ceramic television. What the space does best is embracing multiplicity of forms, shapes, and colors over cohesion; the result is a deliberately messy assembly where this “ministry” feels almost anarchic.

The Ministry of Ceramic Affairs II runs from March 6 till April 25, 2026 at Raam Art Space in Amsterdam.

ATLAS

Steve McQueen, Sunshine State, 2022, collection of De Pont Museum, Tilburg

“It’s about what’s outside of the frame rather than inside; what’s inside is a trigger, a starting point.” With his first exhibition in the Netherlands at De Pont Museum, Steve McQueen shifts our attention to what lies beyond the image. His films, sculptures, and installations create a space to slow down and reflect, placing us somewhere between distance and presence. We become aware not just of the works themselves, but of everything that exists around and beyond them, invited into a quiet, expansive contemplation.

Atlasruns from March 31 till August 30, 2026 at De Pont Museum in Tilburg.

CAN LOVE BE A PHOTOGRAPH

Inez & Vinoodh, Think Love, 2025, shot on Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max, courtesy of Kunstmuseum

Love, in this case, is a way of working. Can Love Be a Photograph traces four decades of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, whose partnership has long defined both the fashion and art scenes, not only in the Netherlands but worldwide. Since the late 1980s, the duo have shaped a visual language where the familiar slips into something slightly uncanny, using early digital manipulation to stretch the limits of the image. Alongside their artistic work, they have produced defining campaigns and portraits that sit firmly within contemporary culture. Moving through themes of identity, performance, and desire, the exhibition reflects a shared practice built on collaboration and an ongoing fascination with what a photograph can hold.

Can Love Be a Photograph runs from March 21 till September 6, 2026 at the Kunstmuseum in Den Haag.

FLOWERS FOREVER

Ann Carrington, Delft Snowball, 2021 Silver, nickel and steel plated spoons 78 x 61 x 61 cm Loan of the artist © Ann Carrington, VG Bild-Kunst

As springtime comes into bloom, Kunsthal Rotterdam celebrates the changing season with an exhibition titled Flowers Forever. Making its Dutch debut, the show presents over two hundred objects that explore the cultural-historical weight that flowers have conveyed over the years. Spanning art, design, fashion, and science, the exhibition highlights the flower’s ever-present tie to our human culture. Throughout history, these delicate plants have carried symbolic meanings, representing emotions and ideas, while even playing roles in religious rituals and political expression. The exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of all of these floral iterations, showing the undeniable significance of the delicate flower.

Flowers Forever runs from March 27 till August 30, 2026 at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam.

VERY MODERN AND RATHER UGLY

Benidorm Spain, 1997, from Common Sense series 1995-1999 © Martin Parr Magnum Photos

There are few photographers who made the everyday feel quite as exposing and uncomfortable as Martin Parr. Very Modern and Rather Ugly brings together a strong selection of his most iconic works, revisiting a practice which turned ordinary moments into rather loaded observations — in the best way possible. With saturated colours, close-up framing and a distinct use of flash, Parr captured the rituals of modern life, from fast food and seaside holidays to the subtleties of class and consumption. Both humorous and unsettling, his images sit somewhere between documentation, critique, and satire. It marks his first solo museum exhibition in the Netherlands in over 20 years, arriving shortly after his passing in December 2025.

Very Modern and Rather Ugly runs from April 3 till August 12, 2026 at the Foam in Amsterdam.

EYE(S) OPEN: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON COLONIAL FILM HERITAGE

Afrian Purnama, Still Sumatra, Jawa, Kalimantan (Gazes from the Colony) by Afrian Purnama, 2026

Eye(s) Open resists the passive consumption of archival imagery, staging a critical confrontation with the colonial gaze embedded in film history. The exhibition mobilizes Eye Filmmuseum’s vast archive of colonial era films from formerly Dutch-occupied regions in Indonesia and Suriname as a site of rupture. After almost two years of researching these often problematic images, eleven artists intervened, reframed, and destabilized inherited colonial visual regimes through new projects. Works like Riar Rizaldi’s Tropenkolder and Jongsma + O’Neill’s Dominion give a voice and space to untold, hidden, and erased stories. The exhibition insists that archives are never neutral; they are infrastructures of power that carry the problematic traces of colonial pasts. In reactivating these images, Eye(s) Open transforms spectatorship into a more ethical and intentional act.

Eye(s) Open runs from April 3 till September 6, 2026 at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.

CLOSE QUARTERS

Anna Ruth, Duo, 2025, acrylic and pigment on canvas, 150 x 200 cm, photography by Stephen White & Co.

Entering the world of Anna Ruth feels like stepping into something mysterious yet deeply familiar. In her first solo exhibition at GRIMM, her work moves between figuration and abstraction, guided by emotion and shaped through symbolic, dreamlike imagery. There is a softness that draws you in, but also something that lingers just beneath the surface. Through layered narratives and shifting forms, she reflects on how we exist, evolve, and search for meaning within the world around us.

Close Quarters runs from April 10 till May 23, 2026 at GRIMM in Amsterdam.

NIGHTLIFE

Hanny Korevaar, Woman in the City, c. 1920, oil on canvas, 104 × 98 cm. Private collection, Den Haag

After 35 years, Nightlife revisits Hanny Korevaar and Armand Bouten, two ‘un-Dutch’ Expressionists who painted the city’s rough edges — from cafés and dance halls to brothels and alleyways. Their remarkably uninhibited work captures scenes of desire, poverty and unease with a directness that pulls you in. Long overshadowed by her husband, Korevaar is finally given equal footing, her practice appreciated for both its radicalism and how far ahead of its time it was. Shaped by travels across Europe and years spent on the margins, their work draws on various movements, most notably French Fauvism and German and Flemish Expressionism. At times so close in subject and style, it becomes difficult to tell where one artist ends and the other begins.

Nightlife runs from April 11 till September 13, 2026 at the Museum van Bommel van Dam in Venlo.

BEYOND THE MANOSPHERE

Amanda van Hesteren, I Want to go Higher (video still), 2023. © Amanda van Hesteren. Produced by Amanda van Hesteren & Sky Verbeek

What does it mean to be a man today, and who gets to define it? At the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Beyond the Manosphere explores masculinity in digital spaces, where repetition and performance shape identity. The exhibition tackles a difficult and relevant subject, showing both rigid expectations and moments of vulnerability. It doesn’t provide answers, but invites reflection on how masculinity is lived, performed, and experienced today.

Beyond the Manosphere runs from April 17 till August 2, 2026 at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

ED VAN DER ELSKEN

Ed van der Elsken, Woman on a Bicycle, 1983, Amsterdam, gift from a private donor, courtesy of Rijksmuseum

Hugely influential, Ed van der Elsken always approached street photography in a very intimate way, his lens capturing Dutch teenagers and street life from the 1960s to the 1990s. The Rijksmuseum’s exhibition on his photography represents an immersion in this outstanding forty-year long collection focusing on every major step in Van der Elsken’s career, life, and eventually, death, which he also decided to document. As a true pioneer in street photography, his work is experimental, often characterized by a peculiar personal engagement with the people in his frames. What emerges is a restless portrait of postwar life itself, raw, intimate, and often unruly, featuring both famous as well as never-before-seen photographs, notes, letters, and other fragments from his life.

Ed van der Elsken runs from June 19 till September 13, 2026 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

EXHIBITIONS IN THE NETHERLANDS YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS THIS SPRING AND SUMMER