EINDHOVEN.- With Dommelplein, the Van Abbemuseum opens a new public ground floor as a visible starting point for a new direction, signalling a shift in institutional tempo: more open, more collaborative, and more connected to the city of Eindhoven.

Located along the Dommel River, which runs past the museum, Dommelplein is designed as an active public environment. It brings art, visitors and the city of Eindhoven into closer contact. The space offers areas for workshops, talks, meditation, children’s activities, multi-faith use, and informal gatherings, alongside solo projects, installations, and long-term artistic projects. A changing daily programme invites visitors to participate, learn, share, return, and spend time in the museum.

“At the Van Abbemuseum, we are committed to activating artistic intelligences to explore and prototype how people might live, (un)learn, and move together. As a municipally funded museum within Eindhoven’s social welfare framework, the institution carries a public responsibility: to ensure art remains a living, socially engaged force capable of addressing technological, ecological, and political urgencies.

Dommelplein is both an invitation and a direction for the museum. It is a space where new directions in artistic production, urban commons, and new forms of collaboration can unfold together. By opening the ground floor, we are signalling how the museum works in the years ahead, more deeply connected to the rhythms of the Dommel River, the city and its communities, from children to designers, from engineers to stargazers.” --- Director Defne Ayas

Dommelplein intends to strengthen the museum’s ties to Eindhoven and its role as a shared space for the city with solo presentations from Sarkis, Ad Minoliti, john gerrard, Geo—Design Design Academy Eindhoven, and Ayoung Kim as well as partnerships with local collectives and organisations, including ADEZIV, Archipel, Studio Woensel-West, Tante Netty.

A new chapter on 6 June: Dommelplein and Collection as Cosmos

Dommelplein will be inaugurated on 6 June, alongside the opening of the new collection display Collection as Cosmos, which focuses on the constellations we can create with artworks across time rather than measuring time linearly. Together, the two projects invite audiences to actively engage with art rather than passively observe it. Collection as Cosmos foregrounds time as something felt and experienced, and as a framework connecting human histories with the rhythms of the universe. The exhibition brings together 250 works in the museum’s second multi-sensory collection presentation.

Artists and Installations

Dommelplein includes seven gallery spaces dedicated to installations and evolving artistic projects. Highlights include a daily water ritual by Sarkis, L’Atelier Aquarelle dans l’eau (The Watercolour Workshop in the Water), which invites visitors to engage creatively with the dynamic interplay of paint and water as a living artwork. The work is activated every day at noon by museum hosts.

Feminist School of Painting by Ad Minoliti is a four-year programme of workshops and talks in a gallery painted with Minoliti's murals, developed with local artists, activists, and researchers.

For Ghost Feed, john gerrard, the museum’s inaugural “system thinker”, will collaborate with the museum's local partners, such as Leonne Cuppen and the Nieuw Zwanenburg fieldlab, alongside musician Ayumi Paul, who will work with the museum’s in-house choir.

With Tartı School, Geo—Design explores scale and measurement in design and distribution. Curated by Merve Bedir and Metahaven, the installation features work by Design Academy Eindhoven alumni and pieces from the Van Abbemuseum’s design collection.

In Ayoung Kim’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, she will develop a new iteration of her Delivery Dancer video installation series, set in the speculative underground city of Novaria, alongside a sundial sculpture linked to the artist’s own cosmology and timekeeping systems.

Sarkis

Sarkis (b. 1938) is a Paris-based artist of Armenian origin working across installation, video, neon, photography, watercolour and drawing. His practice explores memory, time, exile and cultural exchange.

Ad Minoliti

Ad Minoliti (b. 1980, Argentina) creates experimental installations engaging queer ecologies, animalism, childhood, tenderness, architecture, trans-feminism, and design.

john gerrard

john gerrard (b. 1974, Ireland) creates real-time simulations that explore the relationship between technology, labour and landscape. Working with photography, gaming engines and environmental data, he constructs virtual worlds that unfold continuously, often over 24-hour cycles.

Ayumi Paul

Ayumi Paul (b. 1980) works across sound, textiles, installation and performance. Paul formerly trained as a classical violinist, and her research-based practice investigates how geological, ancestral and personal histories are carried, remembered and transformed.

Ayoung Kim

Ayoung Kim (b. 1979, South Korea) works across video, AI, game simulation, virtual reality, sculpture and performance. Her speculative installations explore geopolitics, mythology, migration, technology and queerness through layered fictional worlds.

Haegue Yang

Haegue Yang (b. 1971, South Korea) lives and works between Seoul and Berlin. Her practice spans installation, sculpture, video, collage and performance, using everyday materials such as blinds, clothing racks, bells and industrial fans to create immersive, multi-sensory environments.

Design Academy Eindhoven – Geo Design Department

Geo—Design is a Master’s programme at Design Academy Eindhoven led by Metahaven with tutors including Merve Bedir. The programme explores design in relation to ecological, social and geopolitical systems, combining research, fieldwork and collaboration beyond traditional design practice.