A lovely day today in Rotterdam. Meeting up with my niece A, coffee at her place, lunch in the beautiful Market Hall which is just steps away, and visiting the Blijdorp Zoo together. Train to and from Rotterdam, metro within Rotterdam, Y proudly using her own public transport pass. Back home the first dinner outside in the garden this season to top it off.


Rotterdam skyline with the cube houses in front, De Rotterdam and South Tower building in the background to the left, the Pencil on the right.

Was in Rotterdam yesterday evening for a meeting at the Het Nieuwe Instituut (NI, ‘The New Institute’), the Netherlands’ national museum for architecture, design and digital culture which ao houses the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning. Set in Rotterdams Museumpark, surrounded by the Rotterdam University for Applied Sciences and the Erasmus University Hospital, it is a location with many nice architectural sight lines. Some only appear later in the day, after sunset, such as the lighting of the gallery running alongside the NI. Earlier on people were practicing dances there. When I walked back to the railway station it was mostly empty, allowing this shot.


Mise-en-scène, staged. Photo Ton Zijlstra, CC BY SA NC

During a 2015 visit to the Boymans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam, mentioned in the previous photo, for the ‘Design Derby’ exhibit, I took this photo. I printed it for the frames on my window sills, because I’ve always been hesitant in putting photos in frames around the house. It often feels staged to me when I encounter them in other people’s homes, look who we met, look where we’ve been, here’s me, here’s us. I guess these days that’s also what the Facebook and Instagram timeline is being used for. Or it looks neglected, old photos discolored from years of sunlight, after a while unseen and later still turned invisible to the people living there. An old stage, where nothing much happens anymore. This one therefore counts as a warning amongst the other images currently framed, it’s all in scène gezet, staged. A reminder to self to replace the images regularly, to be exchanged for other pictures that caught my eye, whimsical choices. Not to tell a story to visitors. Meaningless in themselves, gaining meaning only from the story about when I took it, and why I find it interesting to look at it again for a while.

Now that we haven’t been able to travel much and the daily scenery isn’t much different from day to day, I’ve taken to browsing through my Flickr photo archive where I keep over 30.000 photos of the past 16 years. Last week I printed a number of photos to put in the frames on the window sills of my home office. I will be posting some of them here this week.


Lines at Boijmans, photo Ton Zijlstra license CC BY NC SA

Some years ago E and I visited Rotterdam for a weekend, and we also visited the Boijmans van Beuningen museum. This is a shot of their inner court yard, where the lines invite you to play.

The Boijmans is closed until 2026, while major renovations take place, and while they are building an amazing new structure next door that will serve as the new depot. A mirroring bowl, with trees on top.

Now that we haven’t been able to travel much and the daily scenery isn’t much different from day to day, I’ve taken to browsing through my Flickr photo archive where I keep over 30.000 photos of the past 16 years. Last week I printed a number of photos to put in the frames on the window sills of my home office. I will be posting some of them here this week.

The new Depot of the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam is becoming an amazing building.
I visited the ThingsCon conference recently in the Nieuwe Instituut across the road from the building site of the depot. Walking towards it I saw the entire Rotterdam skyline with high rises reflected in the building. They’ve only recently added the mirrors to the facade. In the end, the building will have trees on top.

image by Ton Zijlstra, license CC BY NC SA

The Depot itself when finished will be opened to the public and allow access to the entire collection of the museum. It’s still a depot, so nothing is curated into exhibits, but you can opt for guided tours through the collection. The regular museum next door will have the curated and temporary exhibits. Rather amazing that you can go see a museum’s entire collection. Like visiting an Alladin’s cave of modern art. Can’t wait until they reopen.