Preface

The themes, exhibitions, events, and projects that we deal with at the Draiflessen Collection are given a self-imposed motto each year. In 2023, it was “Shaping Transitions.” This motto gives voice to the idea that change does not just happen—it can be actively influenced, shaped, and molded by us personally, through our actions. “Shaping Transitions” was therefore a call for us as a cultural institution to think about how we can play an active role in shaping change on an ecological level, and therefore also in social ways.

Starting in the fall of 2022, Michael Pinsky’s installation THE FINAL BID had already marked the beginning of a discussion about ecological sustainability with the active participation of our visitors, which we continued intensively in 2023. The extensive event project THE STATE OF AFFAIRS? inspired us to invite visitors to lectures, workshops, guided tours, and excursions starting in early April, during which concrete experiences of sustainable thinking and action were collected and discussed together with our guests. The exhibition rooms became a “mindful space” which provided inspiration through various themed islands during opening hours but also was freely accessible and usable. Here, we critically scrutinized our own work as a museum with the topic of “Draiflessen and Sustainable Exhibiting.” It is a process that we will continue well beyond 2023.

“Shaping Transitions” also means reacting flexibly to new things. It was not until 2019 that lead glass windows from the C&A building in Utrecht, created by the well-known Roermond glazier and artist Joep Nicolas (1897–1972), found their way into our collection. For us, this was an immediate invitation to show these windows together with the historical lead glass windows from the collection—for the first time as a double exhibition CAUTION, GLASS! in the DAS Forum and the Study Room. In this way, we were able to provide very concentrated insights into the significance and development of stained glass over a period of almost 500 years.

In the fall, the exhibitions THREADS, STORYTELLING, and ARIADNE’S NAAIKUSSEN opened at the same time, any they were interwoven in terms of content. The exhibitions—in which the formally related threads on the one hand and the graphic lines on the other were narrative devices—remind us in the context of our motto for the year that we need sustainable perspectives, especially in times of transition. What is more, this makes it clear that we are dependent on images and stories that offer opportunities to relate to ourselves, to the society in which we live, and, not least, to our values and habits.

If we took 2023 as an opportunity to show that even major changes can be actively shaped, then we will carry this “mission” with us into the coming years. The motto for 2024 will be “Creating a Future Vision”—for us, the logical consequence of the new, sometimes surprising, but in any case exciting and inspiring experiences of 2023!