In September 2026, Roos Gortzak’s new programme opens with a three-day celebration. This programme takes its inspiration from the Groninger Museum’s iconic architecture and is rooted in its eclectic collection. No fewer than three new, interconnected exhibitions are opening: The Architect & The Housewife: Cleaning the House, Building the Future, New Light 1: Ani Schulze – The Convent of Pleasure, and the third edition of the Children's Biennale. There's also plenty to see and do in the spring and summer, with forthcoming Bakstain and the Walking Museum.
NEW EXHIBITIONS
Bakstain
9 May - 23 August 2026
For centuries, bricks formed from grey Groningen clay and fired to warm reds and oranges have defined the look of the city and province of Groningen. This exhibition is called Bakstain, the word for ‘bricks’ in Groningen dialect, and presents a cultural history of these iconic bricks as more than just a building material. It celebrates the craft, skills and cultures of brick masonry in the area. Bakstain is about region and resilience, it brings together stories from the past and the present, and it includes a new VR commission by the artist Gus Drake.
Curator: Edgar Pelupessy
Walking Museum
16 August – 16 September 2026
When former director Frans Haks was imagining the future of the Groninger Museum’s new building, he envisioned a flexible, moveable structure that interacted with the landscape. In 1986 he wrote in his diary: “What about thinking of a ‘Walking Museum’ which settles at the water's edge in summer and walks on the frozen water in winter when there is sufficient ice?”
In the summer of 2026, the Groninger Museum is going for a stroll. Inspired by the artists’ society De Ploeg, whose members worked outdoors, the Walking Museum programme moves into the city and the surrounding landscape. Join our De Ploeg bike tours, catch our travelling education caravan in surprising locations, visit Eemshaven for the project Soundings, learn more about Groningen’s fascinating city markers, celebrate the launch of the magazine we have made about the last 10 years of programming at Wall House #2 or attend the outdoor exhibition Into Nature: Haunted by Waters.
Opening of the New Artistic Programme
18 – 20 September 2026
In September 2026, Roos Gortzak’s new programme opens with a three-day celebration. This programme takes its inspiration from the Groninger Museum’s iconic architecture and is rooted in its eclectic collection. Based on the building’s DNA and its remarkable origins – a museum
designed not by one architect but by many designers – the coming years will focus on playfulness and collaboration.
This marks a return to the path that the Groninger Museum embarked on in the 1990s, when thought-provoking international art was central to its collecting and exhibition making. We will engage with the museum’s unique collection, which includes Groningen’s avant-garde artist society De Ploeg, the international postmodern design collective Memphis, Fluxus publications and Asian ceramics. Back to the Future!
Gortzak’s programme departs from artistic tensions. In the first year, we will explore the contrasts and commonalities between ‘the architect’ and ‘the housewife’. The second year will explore the interplay between ‘death’ and ‘the heart’. These tensions provoke productive friction for examining the possibilities of this building and the meaning of the museum in the twenty-first century.
The Architect & The Housewife: Cleaning the House, Building the Future
19 September 2026 – 9 May 2027
"May art direct the future!" was the phrase that Alessandro Mendini used in the 1990s to convince Groningen’s politicians and funders about his unconventional plans for the Groninger Museum new building. He envisioned a space unlike any other. The starting point was a tea tray set with a teapot, cups and a sugar bowl. What if this model was scaled up? Could you create a new kind of museum, a place inviting to the public and a haven for art?
The Groninger Museum on Museumeiland 1 is the answer. Created by Alessandro Mendini, in collaboration with Michele de Lucchi, Philippe Starck, the collective Coop Himmelb(l)au, and then-director Frans Haks. A unique project that Groningen is proud of and where the imaginative power of art is in full force. A spectacularly polyphonic museum building that still resonates with current times.
However, it is striking that only men were involved in the design process of the building. This gender bias is also reflected in the Groninger Museum's collection: less than 2% of the works are made by women or non-binary people. The group exhibition, The Architect & The Housewife: Cleaning the House, Building the Future reflects on these conditions. Asking who is encouraged to think big? Who gets to design 'the house’ and who takes care of it?
The exhibition takes its title from artist Frances Stark’s publication ‘The Architect & The Housewife’, in which she introduces the characters 'the architect’ and 'the housewife’ to explore power dynamics in the art world and in life. The 20 international artists in this exhibition do the same, opening the museum's windows and doors, ushering in fresh air and new perspectives.
Curators: Roos Gortzak and Clare Molloy
Children’s Biennale
19 September 2026 – 10 January 2027
The third edition of the museum's children's biennale invites artists who challenge societal norms and structures, and for whom collaborating with children and young people is an integral part of their practice. Together, the artists and children disrupt received ideas and inherited role models, formed by our education systems,
social networks, the media and the (nuclear) family. The biennale asks which rules and structures do we want to continue with, and which do we want to let go of? What transformative power lies in disobedience? And what role can our desires and imagination play? In conjunction with the exhibition The Architect & The Housewife: Cleaning the House, Building the Future the biennale initiates exchange about the many ways in which we can live, work and play together.
Curator: Judith Spijksma
New Light 1: Ani Schulze – The Convent of Pleasure
19 September 2026 – 14 March 2027
For New Light 1, a new episode of Ani Schulze’s soap opera The Convent of Pleasure has been commissioned by the Groninger Museum. Filmed at the museum, this episode is a meditation on the convent’s architecture. The episode is informed by Schulze's research into De Ploeg and especially its member Alida Pott. It draws upon De Ploeg's collective structure as well as Pott's puppet making and watercolours.
New Light 1: Ani Schulze – The Convent of Pleasure is the first in a new series of exhibitions that cast new light on the museum’s collection of works by Groningen’s avant-garde artist society, De Ploeg.
Curator: Clare Molloy
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Currently the exhibition Hip Hop Is is on view, as well as New Light – De Ploeg, Dragons and Demons – 5000 Years of Asian Ceramics, Who Writes History?, and It's About Time. For more information about these exhibitions and dates, please visit www.groningermuseum.nl/en/now