It’s a mixed bag this month, with King’s Day as one of the highlights. Forecasters are on the fence about the weather, and it will probably be sunny with sharp blasts of icy winds, as usual. Republicans, don’t look away – there is much left to be enjoyed.
Make Easter pop in Schijndel
Schijndel is getting ready for its annual Paaspop festival again, with Di-rect, Antoon, Acda en de Munnik and many others making up this year’s line-up. April 3-5 Website
Heart Jan Dibbets at the H’art
It’s last chance saloon for the Jan Dibbets retrospective at the H’art in Amsterdam. It focuses on the period between 1966 and 1976 when painter Dibbets made way for photographer Dibbets. Jan Dibbets 1966-1976 – Toward Another Photography show the transition from paintbrush to camera, but also the film and audio works, installations and sculptures he made during this pivotal time. Until April 5. Website
Meet the sisters
Strike me Pink productions founder Ralph Remers wrote and directs Morning Sun, the story of two sisters, one of whom leaves the stifling religious atmosphere of their home village to spread her creative wings while the other stays behind bound by family obligations. They find each other again over 30 years later. April 16-19 at Theater De Cameleon in Amsterdam. Website
Polish up your specs for the Miniature Museum
Get your tiny museum card out to visit the recently opened Miniature Museum in Amsterdam – a time saver if ever there was one. Fifty minutes and, boom, you’re done. The Red Light District, Anne Frank, Pride, and lots more can be taken in at a glance, freeing up time to visit other attractions. Website
Be dazzled by Lalique
The Lalique museum has rummaged – very carefully – among its fabulous collection of glassware to put together Kingdom of Colours II. If you missed I, don’t worry because this is as beautiful. Consummate French designer René Lalique’s (1860-1945) experiments with oxides resulted in stunningly coloured glass enamels, making vases and other objects glow like gems. You will want them all. From April 15. Website
Ven al festival de pelis españolas
The Amsterdam Spanish Film Festival is back for another multifaceted edition, from post-Franco rumblings in Balearic to life in a Madrid slum in Sleepless City and Flowers for Antonio, a documentary about the famous Flores family of artists, among many others. April 10-19. Website
Get the picture at the Rijks
The manipulation of images is nothing new, the Rijksmuseum shows, although methods have evolved somewhat since the days of scissors and glue. The Rijks dived into its collection and surfaced with 50 photos cobbled together between 1860 and 1940, sometimes to hilarious effect. Fake! Early photocollages and photomontages is on until May 25. Website
Have a riot with Jan Steen
The Lakenhal in Leiden is celebrating the 400th birthday of Jan Steen, the mischievous Dutch master whose depictions of daily life in the 17th century continue to delight. The Dutch saying Een huishouden van Jan Steen, or “domestic chaos”, refers to his paintings in which peace rarely reigns, and in which hidden moralistic messages and symbols abound.
The audience of the time deciphered the admonitions without a problem and although it will take a modern audience longer, they still hold good. There are paintings from Dutch museum and rarely seen works from private collections. At Home with Jan Steen- 400 years of merrymaking is on from April 2. Website
Go orange on King’s Day
Get your orange clobber out and hit the streets on King’s Day, or better still, find some unwanted tat and flog it. Your local council will have the rules about when and where.
And when you’re done freezing your behind off or catching the sun, you can let your hair down at one of the many music events, such as the Kingsland Festival in Amsterdam and Groningen the Maximalia festival in Utrecht, the Kralingse Bos festival in Rotterdam and the night-before-King’s Day event The life I live in The Hague. April 27.
Take a walk among the tulips from Amsterdam
It’s tulip time at the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam, from the central asian ur tulip to the incredible shapes and colours invented by growers through the ages, including delicate, shredded-paper-like white-leaved blooms to robust red eye poppers. Until April 30. Website
Find beauty in Brussels
It’s not in the Netherlands but you can be here in a jiff. The Bozar in Brussels is combining two thought-provoking exhibitions on beauty. Bellezza e Bruttezza looks at how Renaissance artists, such as Cranach, Leonardo and Botticelli, depicted what was considered beautiful and grotesque in the human form in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the moral implications of both.
In the contemporary works of Picture Perfect, beauty and ugliness are also seen to be subject to the transient norms of society, with beauty associated with the dictates of the health industry thrown in. Until June 14. Website
