National Museum re-opens fourth floor with fine art flex 

The Nationalmusée um Fëschmaart’s current exhibition, Collection/Revelations. Modern and Contemporary Art, promises to be a crowd pleaser. With an eclectic assortment of pieces guaranteed to please everyone’s artistic palate, no one should leave with a bad taste in their mouth. 

From Luxembourg’s own Tina Gillen, to visual artist Hans Op de Beeck and photographer Erwin Olaf, this is an eclectic exhibition, punctuated by heavy hitters such as Rodin’s L’âge d’airain to Picasso’s Paysage de Cannes au crepuscule and Diane Arbus’ Self-Portrait. It promises a whistle stop tour of contemporary art and that is precisely what it delivers. 

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Artists are divided according to separately themed segments of the exhibit, a clever piece of curation that corrals each artwork into a semi-cohesive space. So, Patrick Caulfield’s depiction of Desk, a workspace distorted, exists inside subsection Forms and Shapes. 

The corner called Nature contains Bert Theis’s Aggloville (Paris) which shows the capital city covered in dense vegetation, a modern urban jungle and 2007 forerunner to today’s corporate green washing and dystopian AI-generated artwork. 

Then there is Chaos, a space largely represented by artworks made in the aftermath of World War II – a time of unpredictability, conflict and change that feels strangely relatable today. It’s a beautiful artistic education on periods past, present and future.

The exhibition is a hall of mirrors on each wall – even if you can’t recognise yourself completely in the work presented, there is always something to relate to.  

Ne pas toucher, s.v.p.

The art featured here is tactile. I lost count of the number of times I had to stop my inner child touching pieces like Feipel and Bechemeil’s trompe l’oeil door – no, the door doesn’t open, but if it did, imagine where it could take us. 

It’s an exhibition that constantly challenges our perspectives. A psychedelic tiger, a red-walking stick that isn’t red. From the sublime to the downright ridiculous, a lot of the artwork on offer is fun. It’s not every day that you come face to face with a relief life-size sculpture of two people sat on the edge of a cliff.

Yet, a number of the works shown are deeply disturbing: Erwin Olaf’s depiction of sickness in a flourishing forest or the recently acquired portrait of William Dowuona who was displayed like an animal at the Vienna Zoo in the 19^th century as the Prince of the Ga-people of Osu in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, West Africa. Is it the art itself, or is it the context which is so unsettling? You decide.

Just taking time to view artworks in a gallery space such as the Nationalmusee’s can be a meditative and restorative practice. Many studies show reduced stress levels and lowered heart rates in participants who view artworks, particularly those with nature at their heart.

Also read:

The gallery actively invites visitors to slow down and question the very essence of what’s on view. “What do you associate with the [colour] blue?” asks one panel. The whole experience is made to feel more intimate and inclusive. There is nothing passive about viewing these paintings.

My only gripe: the headsets for the artworks with further information available to listen via their audio tour were largely broken and undergoing repair. This meant there was a shortage of headsets for loan and unfortunately, I lost out that day. Hopefully this will be rectified quickly so future visitors can enjoy an enriched experience. 

Collection/Revelations. Modern and Contemporary Art will be on display until 15 March 2026.