Sculpture Dune, Museum Beelden Aan Zee
The Museum Beelden aan Zee, designed by Wim Quist, lies embedded in the dunes like an iconic bastion along the Scheveningen seafront. Yet on the museum’s sculpture terraces, you hardly experienced this remarkable setting. The museum’s artworks stood in neat rows on terraces paved with concrete tiles and enclosed by concrete walls. Beautiful walls, certainly, but offering little sense of either the Museum or Sculptures by the Sea.
The fundamental idea behind the transformation of the sculpture terraces was to allow the surrounding dunes to flow onto the terraces, as if, after a storm, the wind had blown the sand into the corners of the courtyards. We then ‘cut away’ the surrounding terraces, fixing the dunes in place by planting and sowing them with a wide variety of native species found in the surrounding dune landscape, including several that have become increasingly rare there. The result is a boost to local biodiversity. A sculpture made of nature. All remaining paving slabs were carefully cleaned, relaid and re-pointed. The rectangular pattern of natural stone bands and concrete tiles now contrasts more strongly than before with the curving walls and the soft forms of the dunes, allowing both the architecture and the landscape to reveal themselves more clearly.
With Sculpture Dune, the landscape has now also found its place within the museum itself.
By folding gently undulating dunes into the corners of the terraces, the experience of these outdoor spaces has become far richer and more varied. Nestled between the inlets, on the ridges and in the hollows of the dunes, the sculptures are given greater presence. Previously, each terrace could be taken in at a single glance. Now, the artworks are carefully staged within the landscape, which at times becomes a plinth, at others a backdrop, and elsewhere a spatial setting in which multiple sculptures enter into dialogue with one another. The landscape embraces them, lifts them up, and frames them.
The sculpture terraces have therefore become true sculpture gardens. Where visitors once briefly climbed the stairs only to turn around again, the terraces have become a far more inviting place to linger. Visitors can enjoy a drink from the beach pavilion that we designed within the dunes, sit, observe and be inspired. A tall beach chair on the highest terrace offers an even better view of the North Sea. It is a wonderful place to sit facing into the wind.
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In this way, both the museum and its sculptures enter into the same symbiotic relationship with the surrounding landscape that has always made the museum so special. Museum and artworks alike are now experienced to their fullest potential. At the same time, nature has claimed a far more prominent place within the museum than ever before.
