my favorite 2025 reads 💫

de bieb staat er weer patent bij. #jaarlijksritueel

ART ADVENT #25/ Dec. 24 I long doubted what to select for the final Advent post. A post to mark the culmination of many days of anticipation, of light, and promise. The celebration of new life, of eternity. It’s beautiful and warm. Yet, I didn’t manage to select a glowing, celebratory artwork. 1/

ART ADVENT #24 / Dec. 23 I’m looking forward to a new year in which music will play a bigger role in my professional life again. It’s one of the reasons why I think fondly of having seen this installation during my summer holiday in Denmark. 1/

ART ADVENT #23 / Dec. 22 Another icon I got to see for the first time in my life this year: Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. I fully understand why this is an icon. What a magnificent painting! The sense of loneliness it embodies is strongly palpable. 1/

ART ADVENT #22/ Dec. 21 For the shortest day, I chose a work by one of my favorite light artists: James Turrell. Seeing a work by Turrel when I was in high school, was my first encounter with contemporary art. Until then, I had had no real experience with it. 1/

ART ADVENT #21/ Dec. 20 One of my favorite exhibitions this year was Fiona Lutjenhuis’ solo at 1646 in The Hague. It was a total installation, with wall paintings, her (by now) iconic room dividers, sculptures, bread installations and a soundscape. 1/

ART ADVENT #20 / Dec. 19 It was such an unexpected pleasure to see this small work in the modern European arts section of the MFA in Boston. I knew it from the books, and we had requested it for the Mary Magdalene exhibit back in 2021. 1/

ART ADVENT #19 / Dec. 18 Dutch painter Charley Toorop is probably best known for her stark (self) portraits with their mesmerizing eyes. But I also have a soft spot for her landscapes and still lives. 1/

ART ADVENT #18 / Dec. 17 Recently I read a beautiful, haunting book by Caro van Thuyne. For a year she looked at, and collected images from, the world’s news as if it was happening to her personally. Instead of turning away from the horrible things happing, she let it confront her face first. 1/

Mona is af.

Lijstjestijd: ik mocht ook een lijstje maken ❤️

ART ADVENT #17 / Dec. 16 Joan Mitchell was one of the few women painters of her time that gained critical acclaim during her lifetime. Her work can be described as abstract expressionist, it is not meant to represent anything but is all about evoking emotion and subjective experience instead. 1/

ART ADVENT #16 / Dec. 15 I absolutely love the raw and confrontational series Jeanne Bieruma Oosting made of sex workers in Paris. The graphic works don’t idealize or romanticize, but show these women’s realities in all their harshness. 1/

ART ADVENT #15 / Dec. 14 For third Advent Sunday I picked a remarkable work by a trailblazing artist, who was instrumental for the wider acceptance of women artists in her time - and long after. American painter Ellen Day Hale was thirty years old when she painted this self-portrait. 1/

ART ADVENT #14 / Dec. 13 One thing I like about art is that I learn so many new things from it. This tapestry for instance, taught me about a very particular tomato - and how its existence, like so many foods and peoples, is currently under threat. 1/

ART ADVENT #13 / Dec. 12 While the Michelangelo exhibition at Teyler’s mostly focused on his drawings and sketches, this small sculpture attributed to the master caught my eye. 1/

In het Ikonenmuseum is het prima luisteren naar @liekew.bsky.social over Maria Magdalena.

This afternoon I gave a lecture at the jubilee afternoon of the Ikonenmuseum in Kampen. Got to talk about Mary Magdalene - and it was truly wonderful. So many enthusiastic and interested people afterward. Happy 20th, Ikonenmuseum!

ART ADVENT 12/ Dec. 11 If you visit the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, do pop into the collection presentation. One of my favorite works here is this tv screen showing Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen. /1

Onlangs verschenen: Het nieuwe winternummer van de Nederlandse Boekengids!(2025#6 december/januari). “De shortlist van de Joost Zwagerman Essayprijs 2025’” 👉 Ga naar www.nederlandseboekengids.com/nummers/20256/ of volg de link in onze bio

ART ADVENT #11 / Dec. 10 This video work is one of the opening works in the new museum on migration, Fenix in Rotterdam. Bill Viola’s Ancestors, a mother and son walking through a sand storm, over the stretch of about 20 minutes, towards as viewers. 1/

ART ADVENT #10 / Dec. 9 Edouard Manet is one of my all time favorite painters. He only painted a handful of religious scenes, and I had only ever seen one in the flesh. Until I unexpectedly, so without preparation, visited the Art Institute of Chicago (what an amazing museum!),.. 1/

ART ADVENT #9 / Dec. 8 Louise Nevelson called this wall-covering assemblage of boxes filled with objects her “Sky Cathedral.” It’s a tribute to scraps and parts she found in her neighborhood in Manhattan, which she elevated to a higher sphere. 1/

CFP alert! I am co-editing an upcoming NKJ volume on The Artist's Biography. A super exciting and timely topic! Want to contribute? The CFP is now online, deadline for abstracts is January 20, 2026. Find the CFP here, under downloads: brill.com/display/seri... Questions? Feel free to reach out!

ART ADVENT #8 / Dec. 7 Today is second Advent Sunday. In one of the side chapels in the majestic St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York, stands this intriguing triptych: depicting The Life of Christ by Keith Haring. 1/

ART ADVENT #7 / Dec. 6 One artwork made me cry this year. Made me shed a tear. Well, more than one, actually. It was an Edward Hopper painting I saw in the Whitney Museum in New York. One of the most white cube museums I know, where I felt utterly out of place with tears running from my eyes. 1/

ART ADVENT #6 / Dec.5 When Wilgefortis, a King’s daughter, refused to marry, she prayed that no man would notice her. Her wish granted by God, she started to grow a beard. This act, however, was interpreted as witchcraft and Wilgefortis was sentenced to die on the cross. 1/

Geen woord over het feit dat auto's steeds zwaarder, groter en dus gevaarlijker worden. Terwijl onderzoek aantoont dat de normalisering van SUV's leidt tot meer verkeersdoden. Doe dáár wat aan: maak het illegaal of onbetaalbaar om in zo'n moordmachine op de openbare weg te rijden. nos.nl/l/2593260

ART ADVENT #5 / Dec. 4 Judith Leyster was the first woman to join a Dutch painters’ guild, in 1633. This was unprecedented in a world dominated and ruled by men. This fabulous portrait of an unknown woman was long thought to have been painted by the Dutch master painter Frans Hals. 1/

ART ADVENT #4 / Dec.3 In their paintings, Impressionist artists tried to capture spontaneous, fleeting moments. As such they wanted to convey something about the permanent state of flux of human experience, of time passing by, and of the monumentality of everyday life. 1/

ART ADVENT #3 / Dec. 2 Advent is a period of anticipation, of expectation, of hope, and of the dawn of eternal light. I feel the temple “Lumina” by Isa van Lier is an embodiment of this sentiment: it delivers light at the end of a dark tunnel. 1/

ART ADVENT #2 / Dec.1 Some artworks are subject to so much reproduction, that you tend to forget about the real object behind the image. Grant Wood’s American Gothic is an image like that to me. Seeing images of it everywhere, I never really understood the work’s popularity. 1/

ART ADVENT #1 / Nov. 30 It’s first Advent Sunday today, so let’s get ready for another edition of Art Advent. Until December 24, I’ll post inspiring, cheerful, thought provoking or consoling art works I’ve seen over the past year. 1/

I have a joke about Mary Magdalene, but I am not sure you’ll believe me.

It was thrilling to see the paperback edition of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe, for the first time last week at the @aarweb.bsky.social book exhibition! Out and available now, also online!

Morgen op het Malieveld in Den Haag vindt het PAIS Protest plaats: voor de honderdduizenden mensen bij wie een post-infectieziekte zoals post-covid het leven volledig ontwricht heeft.

hey, @elckerlieke.bsky.social in de krant!

Vacature in Schiedam! Help mee vrouwelijke kunstenaars die abstract werkten in de jaren 70, op de kaart te zetten! stedelijkmuseumschiedam.nl/open-vacatur... #stedelijkmuseumschiedam #vacature #onderzoek #juniorconservator

yes! my kinda challenge. One like = one book I love.

yes! my kinda challenge. One like = one book I love.

Trouw toont zich opnieuw de verzetskrant van Nederland - wat een verpletterende voorpagina

Het contrast tussen de onleefbare situatie in Gaza en de passieve houding van een Kamermeerderheid wordt steeds duidelijker. Ook demissionair premier Dick Schoof laat zich niet uit over de honger en het geweld. buff.ly/w4iBpfX

Landen moeten klimaat beschermen, oordeelt Internationaal Gerechtshof in baanbrekend advies

22 July, the feast day of Mary Magdalene ❤️ Details of: - Marlene Dumas - Adya van Rees - Delphine Somers - Master of the Utrecht Female Stone Head (as displayed in the Mary Magdalene exhibit I curated in 2021)

Book symposium for Jesper Sørensen’s *Why Cultures Persist* posted online at Religion, Brain and Behavior. With commentaries from, among others, RCC’s Anders Klostergaard Petersen and @bgpurzycki.bsky.social. www.tandfonline.com/action/showA...

Niet geheel met opzet, maar ook niet heel verwonderlijk, las ik de afgelopen dagen een derde reli-roman op rij. De hattrick werd gevormd door De Baptisten van Nyk de Vries. Eigenlijk doet de term reli-roman ‘t boek tekort, het gaat over opgroeien in een dorp, … 1/

"Het aantal is wel gelijk gebleven." Maar ja, dat blijft dus teveel. Want het zou niet nodig moeten zijn. nos.nl/artikel/2575...

40! 📸 Esiri Erherieni-Essi, The Birthday Party, 2021. Seen at Bozar, Brussels yesterday.