Key Takeaways
A bright year in a bright building
The Groninger Museum in the city of Groningen fills 2025 with bold design, textile art, long-term collection shows and a citywide museum night.
Exhibitions that change over time
Some shows, like “Otherworldly” and “Bound to the Miraculous (after Bas Jan Ader)”, have already closed, while others such as “Draken & Demonen” and “Nieuw licht – De Ploeg” continue into 2026.
Culture for day and night
The programme includes a large museum night in September and, at the end of the year, a new exhibition about hip hop and its place in Dutch culture.
Story & Details
A colourful museum on the water
The Groninger Museum stands on a small island opposite the main railway station. Its postmodern building is famous for sharp angles, bright colours and different pavilions designed by several architects. Inside, 2025 turns into a busy year that mixes design, contemporary art, history and music.
At the heart of the summer and autumn programme is the exhibition “Welcome to the Dreamhouse! A Postmodern Interior by Marloes and Wikke” in which visitors walk through a full-size dream home. Each room is filled with postmodern chairs, lamps, cabinets and small objects from the museum’s own design collection. Designers such as Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass and other members of the Memphis group appear in living rooms, bedrooms and even an improvised garden. The atmosphere is playful and theatrical, and everyday things like toys and ashtrays are treated as part of a moving stage set. The exhibition opened in June 2025 and ran into mid-November, so by the end of November it has just finished, leaving strong memories for visitors who enjoyed its bright humour and strong shapes.
Textile worlds and a risky sea voyage
In another part of the museum, 2025 started with “Joana Schneider – Otherworldly”. This exhibition showed large textile sculptures made from materials such as wool, rope and recycled fishing lines. The works looked like creatures from stories or dreams and asked visitors to think about change, identity and beauty. The show opened in April and closed on the last day of August 2025, so now it belongs to the recent past, but the images still circulate in photos and reviews, especially a figure with pink hair that played with ideas about youth and social media.
A very different journey came with “Bound to the Miraculous (after Bas Jan Ader)” by Edward Clydesdale Thomson. This installation took inspiration from the Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader, who set off alone across the Atlantic Ocean in a small sailing boat fifty years earlier and disappeared at sea. Thomson’s work used data and long-term observation to follow a virtual boat on repeated crossings, always exposed to changing weather and currents. At the same time a small exhibition presented documents and photographs related to Ader’s life and his links to Groningen. This project was on view during the summer and closed at the end of October 2025, adding a quiet, reflective note to the year.
Time, painting and a new look at De Ploeg
From July 2025 onward, the museum also presents “It’s About Time”, a new display of its own collection. Instead of arranging works in strict date order, the show places seventeenth-century paintings next to conceptual pieces, photographs and installations. Themes such as labour, the human body and everyday routines bring the works together. The exhibition continues beyond 2025, so visitors at the end of the year can still walk through this mix of centuries and styles.
On 25 October 2025 another long-term project opened: “Nieuw licht – De Ploeg” (“New Light – De Ploeg”). De Ploeg is an artists’ group founded in Groningen in 1918, known for expressionist paintings in strong colours. The new presentation uses several rooms to show landscapes, portraits and prints by members such as Jan Altink, Johan Dijkstra and Jan Wiegers. It offers a fresh view of a group that helped shape modern art in the north of the Netherlands and is planned to stay on display until at least the end of 2026, so visitors have plenty of time to meet or revisit these paintings.
Dragons, demons and a museum that stays open late
Ceramics lovers receive a detailed travel through history with “Draken & Demonen – 5000 jaar Aziatische keramiek uit de collectie Anders”. This show uses around four hundred objects to tell stories of tea drinking, incense, family rituals and mythic creatures such as dragons and demons. The pieces range over five thousand years of Asian art. The exhibition links to a broader interest in Asian ceramics at the museum and remains open into early January 2026, so it is still on view at the end of November.
History also appears in a new collaboration with Museum aan de A, the city’s museum of local history. From 15 November 2025 a pop-up exhibition inside the Groninger Museum offers a preview of Museum aan de A’s future permanent displays. The show looks at who tells the story of Groningen and includes voices that are often missing from traditional history books, as well as a digital map that helps visitors plan trips to other heritage sites in the province.
One date from the year stands out: Saturday 20 September 2025. On that evening, the ninth Groninger Museumnacht took place. Seven museums across the city, including the Groninger Museum and Museum aan de A, opened their doors with one shared ticket. Visitors enjoyed art, music, workshops, lectures, poetry and dance until after midnight, turning the city centre into a lively cultural route that linked collections, performances and nightlife.
Towards hip hop and a small Dutch language corner
As the year moves towards winter, attention shifts to the culture of hip hop. A large exhibition titled “Hip Hop Is” is planned to run from 20 December 2025 until May 2026. It will present artworks, fashion, photography and music connected to local and international hip hop scenes. The show is expected to highlight the strong hip hop history of Groningen and to host events such as talks, concerts and a meeting of the European Hiphop Studies Network in March 2026, turning the museum into a hub for discussion about rap, dance and street culture.
The museum as a whole keeps an eye on young visitors and accessibility. Children and teenagers can join workshops and family tours, while the building includes routes and tools for visitors with mobility or visual needs. The museum shop and café offer design gifts, books, lunch and coffee, so a visit can easily fill a day in the city.
A small language corner adds one last detail. In Dutch, the word “Museumnacht” joins “museum” with “nacht”, which means night. The phrase is short, but it catches the feeling of that special September evening when art and darkness share the same streets.
Conclusions
The Groninger Museum uses 2025 to show how one institution can hold many worlds at once. A visitor who came in spring met textile creatures and a risky sea voyage. Someone walking through the doors in late autumn finds dragons, local history and expressive painters from a century ago, with hip hop just around the corner. The building itself, with its strong colours and different pavilions, mirrors that variety.
Because several exhibitions, like “It’s About Time” and “Nieuw licht – De Ploeg”, continue beyond the calendar year, the museum does not simply close the book on 2025. Instead, it turns the year into a bridge between past and future shows. Anyone planning a trip to Groningen can still step into much of this story, choosing a route through design, ceramics, painting or music according to taste and mood.
Selected References
[1] Groninger Museum. “Welcome to the Dreamhouse! A Postmodern Interior by Marloes and Wikke.”
https://www.groningermuseum.nl/en/art/exhibitions/welcometothedreamhouse
[2] Groninger Museum. “Joana Schneider – Otherworldly.”
https://www.groningermuseum.nl/en/art/exhibitions/joanna-schneider-otherworldly
[3] Groninger Museum. “Bound to the Miraculous (after Bas Jan Ader).”
https://www.groningermuseum.nl/en/art/exhibitions/bound-to-the-miraculous-after-bas-jan-ader
[4] Groninger Museum Collection. “It’s About Time.”
https://collectie.groningermuseum.nl/tentoonstellingen/its-about-time
[5] Groninger Museum. “Nieuw licht – De Ploeg.”
https://www.groningermuseum.nl/kunst/tentoonstellingen/nieuw-licht-de-ploeg
[6] Groninger Museum. “Draken en Demonen: 5000 Jaar Aziatische Keramiek uit de Collectie Anders.”
https://www.groningermuseum.nl/kunst/tentoonstellingen/draken-en-demonen-5000-jaar-aziatische-keramiek-uit-de-collectie-anders
[7] Groninger Museum. “Pop-up Museum aan de A in Groninger Museum in 2025.”
https://www.groningermuseum.nl/museum/nieuws/pop-up-museum-aan-de-a-in-groninger-museum-in-2025
[8] Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Museum. “Groninger Museumnacht 2025 (Museum Night Groningen).”
https://www.rug.nl/museum/visitor-information/calendar/2025/2025-09-20-groninger-museumnacht?lang=en
[9] Groninger Museum. “Hip Hop Is.”
https://www.groningermuseum.nl/kunst/tentoonstellingen/hip-hop-is
[10] Visit Groningen. “Exhibitions in Groningen.”
https://www.visitgroningen.nl/en/blogs/exhibitions-in-groningen
[11] Thuismuseum. “Groninger Museum: bright colours, many styles and art from every time – Thuismuseum #60.” YouTube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5cQrPNjyCw
Appendix
De Ploeg
An artists’ group founded in Groningen in 1918, known for expressionist paintings and prints with strong colours and bold forms, and an important part of Dutch modern art history.
Draken & Demonen
The title of an exhibition at the Groninger Museum that presents five thousand years of Asian ceramics, including objects with dragon and demon motifs and many pieces used in daily life and rituals.
Groninger Museumnacht
A yearly museum night in the city of Groningen during which several museums open late with one shared ticket, offering exhibitions alongside music, workshops and performances.
Hip Hop Is
A large exhibition at the Groninger Museum opening in December 2025 that looks at hip hop as a cultural movement, combining art, fashion, photography and music from local and international scenes.
It’s About Time
A long-term collection display at the Groninger Museum that mixes artworks from different centuries to explore how ideas about time, work, the body and daily life appear in art.
Joana Schneider – Otherworldly
An exhibition of textile sculptures by artist Joana Schneider at the Groninger Museum in 2025, using materials such as wool and rope to create dreamlike figures that explore change, identity and beauty.
Museum aan de A
A museum of the history of the city and province of Groningen that is currently renewing its permanent displays and, in 2025, presents a pop-up exhibition inside the Groninger Museum.
Museumnacht
A Dutch word that combines “museum” and “nacht” (night) and is used for night-time museum events where collections can be visited after dark.
Postmodern design
A style of design that became popular from the 1980s, often using bright colours, unusual shapes and playful references to past styles, seen clearly in the “Welcome to the Dreamhouse!” exhibition.
Textile art
Artworks made mainly from fibres and fabrics such as wool, rope or cloth, often created through techniques like weaving, knitting or embroidery, and used in the Groninger Museum’s “Otherworldly” exhibition.
My Diary - Leonardo Cardillo 