30 november 2018
During the last week of October all three graphic design classes traveled to the Netherlands for the long study tour. Each core course has their own study tour where the class travels somewhere to spend a week learning more in depth on their course subject. For graphic design this means lots of museums, sketching, and studio visits.
Sunday
The week started with a 6:00 am meet time at the airport for an 8:00 flight to Amsterdam. After a slightly turbulent 90-minute flight we landed and it was on to the hotel to drop of bags before walking to FOAM Photography Museum. FOAM had a few exhibits showing while we visited; my favorite was Masahisa Fukase’s Private Scenes which had mainly black and white photos. There were series on birds, animals and his family. There was also an exhibit entitled ...Loading which showed works from the collection and Double Enclosure which showed self-portraits by Paul Mpagi Sepuya. I wasn’t sure on the photography rules for this museum so I don’t have many photos or the exhibits.
After FOAM we walked to the Nine Streets, a well-known area of Amsterdam, to do an assignment on what senses we used on each street. Groups of four were given a sheet of paper to show a sense found on each street and after 90 minutes everyone met up to get drinks and share what they’d made. After some hot chocolate and presentations it was about 6:30 pm and time to move on to the final destination of the night.
With a mix of walking and the tram everyone made their way to Kookstudio Leeuw where we would all cook and then eat dinner. There were several stations with ingredients and recipes for everyone to group up and start cooking. My group was in charge of making mashed potatoes and the group across from us made meatballs. There were also groups for baked potatoes, brussels sprouts, a second mashed potatoes group, cookies, and poached pears. After everything was cooked everyone sat down at one long table and had dinner. It was mainly potato based, which we were told is a staple of Dutch food. Between the cold weather, food, and 6:00 am meet time everyone was pretty tired at this point. We said thank you to the actual chefs who had put together the recipes for us and went to wait at the bus stop. After a long day of traveling and walking we got to the hotel at 10:30 and I was asleep by 11:00.
Monday
Monday morning started with an 8:45 meet time and a tram trip to Mainstudio, which is a graphic design studio founded 2005 by Edwin van Gelder. His designs work heavily with a grid system and the projects he works on are often in book format which I really enjoy. Getting to visit studios and hear practicing designers talk about their projects and process and just seeing what their studios look like is often one of the more interesting parts of these trips. After the studio visit we went to the Stedelijk Museum which I thoroughly enjoyed. The museum had a lot of exhibitions going on and each was unique from the others. I started in the basement which was a huge room with a timeline of paintings along the wall, including a surprising number of women, with furniture and sculptures set up in the middle. I probably spent too long in the basement looking at the different paintings and posters.
Then I wandered around the museum trying to hit all the other exhibits. I went through Metahaven: EARTH which had lots of video installations. The one I spent the most time watching seemed to be tackling propaganda using clips from Russian news channels mixed with anime clips. Then I went to the Lily van der Stokker exhibition Friendly Good. There were lots of bright colors, wall paintings, and almost childlike drawings. It was a nice contrast to the minimal all white design that seems to be in lots of museums.
The Amsterdam, the Magic Center displayed pieces from the museum collection on counter culture in the 60s and 70s. At this point I was starting to run out of time so I quickly went through this exhibit and then even quicker through the exhibition entitled True Luxury… which had acquisitions and donations from 2012-2018.
After the Stedelijk it was time to find a place for a quick lunch before meeting up again for the Van Gogh Museum. I went to a cafe called Blushing that had some cool tiles with a few people. We got some sandwiches and ate them very quickly to make the 2:20 meet time. The Van Gogh Museum was very busy, which I expected, and had an interesting set up of empty space in the middle and paintings along the walls. Since a lot of his famous pieces are spread around the world there weren’t many of the more well-known paintings. I’m glad I went since it was an optional visit during the study tour but had I gone on my own I think I would’ve been a little disappointed. Also, no pictures allowed so I have no photos of the museum or paintings but I did get one of this nice sign in the bathroom.
After the museum we had a little time to wander before the next scheduled event so a couple friends and I walked around and went into a thrift store where I found a bit of home even if it was the wrong team.
After about an hour of wandering it was time for a canal tour which I was worried about due to some pretty bad motion sickness. I’m sure we passed by lots of cool and pretty things but I spent the entire time kind of zoned out on Dramamine and staring straight forward the whole time. I did learn that there are lots of bikes at the bottom of the canals and I’m pretty sure the pre-recorded tour guide was pronouncing any Dutch names with a strong American accent. Following the canal tour it was time for dinner at Indrapura which is an Indonesian restaurant and I think my favorite place we ate the whole week. We shared food so they grouped all us vegetarians together which really simplified the whole process. There was rice, mango salad, fried tofu, vegetables in peanut sauce, and a bunch of other little dishes that I’m not sure what they were but they were good. After dinner a small group of us went to walk around the Red Light District and then it was time for bed.
Tuesday
This was the last full day in Amsterdam and it started out with a visit to the EYE Film Institute. EYE is a mix of an archive of old movie posters and film equipment, exhibition space, and a modern cinema. The basement had a room with clips from different movies, bits of film strips, and different devices used throughout film history. The current exhibition was works by Ryoji Ikeda, an artist and musician creating electronic music. I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed his works. The videos were large scale and mesmerizing and the sound was more abstract that what I had been expecting. I thought I would like the museum more than I did but I also thought I would like the exhibition less than I did so overall a good visit. Since there wasn’t much to cram into the visit I also had a little more time to sketch, which was nice.
We had lunch at the museum and then took a ferry to NDSM. The area used to be a shipping wharf and has since been turned into an area for festivals and other events. We went to a cafe and got some warm drinks and I finished writing a couple postcards.
After finishing up at the cafe we walked to the Rembrandt House Museum which was another optional visit. The museum is just a house between many other buildings which I found interesting. It’s a relatively small museum so we got through fairly quickly. It’s not a place I would’ve likely visited on my own, but I am glad I went. I especially enjoyed seeing the etchings and the set-up of his house. After the Rembrandt House I went off to find a post office and buy some stamps.
The final stop of the day was the Anne Frank House. I’m not sure what to say about it other than it was an intense and moving experience. However, the two people in front of me who were posting everything to snapchat did take a little bit away from the experience.
Afterwards my friend Kate and I went and got Italian food among the surprising number of Argentinian restaurants in Amsterdam. After dinner we tried to find a place to get stroopwafel but were unsuccessful so we ended up getting some regular waffles instead.
Wednesday
On Wednesday morning, which was also Halloween, everyone got on the bus to go to Utrecht where we would spend the day. Our first stop was Autobahn Studio where we listened to a presentation about projects they’ve worked on and the process they go through. The studio’s use of physical materials made what they do stand out next to all the digital work in graphic design. Learning about how they use collaboration to create projects was also something helpful to hear about.
We spent more time than expected at Autobahn, so afterwards we walked to the Centraal Museum where we had about an hour to walk around. The main exhibition focused on lines and took up the lower level of the museum. I didn’t manage to see much more than that exhibition but there was so much variety that it was still interesting.
I got some Vietnamese food with a few other people for lunch and then it was off to the Rietveld Schröder House. The house is built in the De Stijl style, giving it a strong focus on geometric shapes and primary colors. Having a guided tour through the house gave more context and pointed out details I wouldn’t have noticed on my own such as continuations of lines from inside to outside and the way colors were blocked. The ability to completely open up the upper level of the house was also cool to see in person.
The Schröder House was the last stop in Utrecht. After that it was on to Rotterdam which would be the final city of the study tour. Because of all the traffic we went straight to the hotel, had 5 minutes to drop things off, and then walked straight to dinner. After dinner I walked around with a few people before it started to rain. We went to Five Guys, which was my first time going to Five Guys, and they got milkshakes but I wasn’t feeling brave enough to push my luck with dairy.
Thursday
Thursday started with potentially my favorite studio visit of the semester. At 9:15 we walked over to Studio Dumbar for another presentation/Q&A session with working designers. This presentation was especially interesting to me because they focused both on the final design and the process behind it. We got to see what worked and what didn’t and how they built upon ideas. My favorite example was this video. It was also cool to see their focus on experimentation outside of projects and making things just for the sake of exploring something new. This was evident in their weekly time dedicated to creating some sort of motion graphic experiment using whatever programs they knew how to use.
After the studio visit we had some time to walk around and get lunch before the next museum. Seeing Rotterdam in the light made me realize how different it was to all the other cities I’d been to so far. It has tall, modern buildings like basically every major city in the United States but there’s lots more space between the buildings. It kind of reminded me of a bigger downtown Des Moines. I went to a cafe for lunch with some people and got a nice sandwich.
After lunch everyone met up at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, one of the oldest museums in the Netherlands. It was a large museum with a timeline of paintings, a section on design, and special exhibitions entitled Pure Rubens, Marten Hendriks - Time Slip, and Boijmans in the War: Art in the Destroyed City. They also had the coolest coat rack. I really enjoyed this museum and had fun sketching a bunch of cats I saw in various paintings.
We spent about two hours at the museum and then went to the Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam. The main focus of the museum was the current exhibition of photos by Cas Oorthuys. There were also some fun photos of cows and people asleep at airports. I was very tired at this point and not super into the photography so I didn’t do any sketching at this museum.
Following the museum was dinner at Hotel New York where I had some really good couscous and very fancy pumpkin pie. Then everyone walked over to an indoor market kind of place for drinks and sketchbook sharing. Then it was a walk back to the hotel and a little bit of filling in my sketchbook before bed.
Friday
The last day in the Netherlands started at Kunsthal Rotterdam. The museum had several exhibitions going on, most of which I really enjoyed. I started with Surf Tribe, a series of photos by Stephan Vanfleteren of people who are really intertwined with surfing and the ocean. The larger-than-life photos were in a dark room which really enhanced the whole experience. Then I went to Objectivity | The Art of Useful Things which is a collection of items from British design teacher and architect David Usborne. The objects were all placed on a wall with a cool pamphlet showing each silhouette and identifying each item. I quickly passed through Action <-> Reaction | 100 Years of Kinetic Art which probably would’ve been cool to spend a long time looking at but everything in there made me super motion sick. I walked through Hugo Claus, Con amore which had an interesting mix of mediums and then T-Shirt Truth by Susan Barnett.
The last museum stop was the Het Nieuwe Instituut, first for lunch (sandwiches and carrot ginger soup) and then through the museum and the Sonneveld House that is also part of the museum. The Sonneveld House is a house designed in the Dutch Functionalist style. The color choices were really different than the other architecture we’d been looking at
Before going back to the airport in Amsterdam to go back to Copenhagen we went to the Markthal. This building is a giant arch with food stands on the inside and private apartments in the arch. I finally got some stroopwafel and walked around looking at everything. Outside the Markthal are some notable examples of modern architecture: The Pencil and The Cube buildings. These are both iconic to Rotterdam and different than other architecture I’ve seen this semester.
The last thing to do was go to the airport and fly back to Copenhagen. The plane landed around 11:15 pm and I was greeted a few stops later on the metro by lots of loud, drunk people in glowing Santa hats celebrating J-Day, the release of the Christmas beer.
I saw so many cool things in the Netherlands; here are a few of them from my sketchbook.