THE HAGUE.- Inspired by the historic Tapestry Room at Kunstmuseum Den Haag, artist Natasja Kensmil has created Allegory of Glaciers, a new contemporary mural that turns one of the museum’s monumental stairwells into an immersive world of melting ice, mythological figures and layered historical memory.

The commission continues a museum tradition in which artists are invited to respond directly to the architecture of the building and to the collection housed within it. In Kensmil’s hands, the stairwell becomes more than a passageway. It is transformed into a dramatic visual environment where drawing, painting, history and climate anxiety meet.

Allegory of Glaciers unfolds as a continuous painting made up of several freely hanging canvases, both painted and drawn, across which the mural extends. The arrangement plays with the depth and rhythm of the stairwell itself, allowing the work to shift as visitors move through the space. Elegant drawn lines and painted fields alternate and overlap, sometimes bringing the drawing to the foreground, at other times allowing the painterly gesture to dominate.

The result is a layered, atmospheric work that evokes a world in transition. Kensmil’s glacier landscapes are inspired by archival images of glaciers, pages from medieval manuscripts and fragments of historical maps. Like old postcards pinned to a board, the panoramas seem to carry memories from another time. They also suggest the role of glaciers as natural archives, preserving traces of the Earth’s history within their ice.

For the new mural, Kensmil drew particular inspiration from the museum’s historic period rooms, especially the Tapestry Room. These 17th- and 18th-century interiors are a permanent part of Kunstmuseum Den Haag and today offer insight into the lives of the elite who governed the Netherlands and its colonized territories.

The Tapestry Room, a reception room dating from 1710, features tapestries by Alexander Baert that depict an imagined forest landscape filled with water, exotic birds and decorative abundance. Above them, Roman goddesses such as Minerva, goddess of wisdom, and Justitia, goddess of justice, appear on a painted ceiling.





Kensmil reimagines that visual world through a contemporary lens. Instead of a lush, paradisiacal landscape, she presents an icy environment under threat. The mythological references are expanded to include nature goddesses connected to fragile ecosystems and Indigenous cosmologies. Among them are Pachamama, the Inca goddess of Mother Earth; Sedna, revered by the Inuit as the mother of the sea; and Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, linked to a region where glaciers once existed.

Through these figures, Kensmil connects climate change, industrialization and colonization to the disappearance of landscapes that many Indigenous communities have long associated with divine forces. The mural becomes not only a meditation on melting glaciers, but also on memory, power and loss.

To make room for Kensmil’s work, an existing mural by Günter Tuzina has been temporarily and carefully covered. Earlier this year, Kunstmuseum Den Haag invited Hadassah Emmerich to create Petals Pulp Papaya Plunge in another stairwell. This summer, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum will complete the series of three new murals.

Allegory of Glaciers was made possible in part by a generous contribution from the Association of Friends of Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The gift marks the 160th anniversary of the Friends and supports the continuation of this distinctive museum tradition.

Natasja Kensmil, born in 1973, lives and works in Amsterdam and has been active in the art world for more than two decades. Her work often explores the darker sides of Dutch colonial history, as well as religion, mysticism, mythology and the burden of the past. Her works have been shown at Andriesse Eyck Galerie in Amsterdam, the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, and are held in collections including the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum, the Van Abbemuseum, Kunstmuseum Den Haag and the Dallas Museum of Art.

In 2021, Kensmil received the Johannes Vermeer Award, with the jury praising her work as “healing, constructive and critical.” With Allegory of Glaciers, she brings that same forceful combination of beauty, history and unease into the heart of Kunstmuseum Den Haag.