Nieuwe Instituut Presents ‘Garden Futures’ in RotterdamNieuwe Instituut Presents ‘Garden Futures’ in Rotterdam

• Garden Futures, an exhibition about the history and future of the modern garden, opens at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on Saturday 16 November 2024.

• Featuring designers and artists such as Roberto Burle Marx, Jamaica Kincaid, Mien Ruys, Piet Oudolf and Derek Jarman, the exhibition explores the personal, political and commercial ideals that have shaped our gardens over the years.

• The exhibition also shows that the garden is more than a refuge: it is also a testing ground for solutions to issues of biodiversity, social justice and a sustainable future.

• Developed in collaboration with the Vitra Design Museum and the Wüstenrot Foundation for culture and heritage, Garden Futures was previously shown at the Vitra Design Museum.

A garden is a world in miniature. Whether it is a small patch of land painstakingly cultivated from nature, a tightly stylised work of art or a veritable wilderness of perennials, its form says something about the people who create it and their relationship with nature – and sometimes about entire cultures and eras. For designers, the garden is also a laboratory where biodiversity, social justice and a sustainable future are tested and put into practice: a place of promise and hope.

Garden Futures, which opens at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on Saturday 16 November, traces our evolving relationship with gardens. The exhibition explores the origins of the contemporary garden and searches for new models, based on gardens by designers and artists such as Roberto Burle Marx, Jamaica Kincaid, Mien Ruys, Piet Oudolf and Derek Jarman.

In Garden Futures, you will see the design ideals of the garden as a personal refuge, where people and nature live together in harmony. But gardens also reflect political and commercial agendas. One can see this when considering who owns a garden, how much space there is for gardens in cities, vegetable gardens as a form of self-sufficiency and food security, the historic colonial trade in flowers and plants, and the influence of garden tool and patio furniture manufacturers on our tastes.

As well as being an idyllic retreat, the garden is also a literal testing ground for new ideas and experiments. Increasingly, we see gardens as part of larger ecological systems, rather than demarcated pieces of land. Designers are experimenting in the garden with alternative solutions for biodiversity, social justice and a sustainable future. The exhibition features examples of indoor gardens, vertical forests, community gardens, floating gardens, school gardens, rooftop greenhouses, food forests, urban farms and forest gardens.

Garden Futures was developed in collaboration with the Vitra Design Museum and the Wüstenrot Foundation for culture and heritage, and previously shown at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany. The original exhibition was designed by the Italian design studio Formafantasma.

For the Dutch adaptation at the Nieuwe Instituut, co-curator Maria Heinrich and spatial designer Frank Bruggeman have supplemented the exhibition with works from the archive of garden and landscape designer Michael van Gessel and with local, nature-inclusive designs. Several Rotterdam examples are included: the garden suburb of Vreewijk, the Island of Brienenoord tidal park, the community garden Wijktuin Ommoord, the Hofbogenpark and the New Garden. Artist Ada Patterson has created a work of art especially for this exhibition, providing a critical take on the colonial relationship of gardens and history in Rotterdam.

Garden Futures will be on display at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam from 16 November 2024 to 13 April 2025. The public opening will be on Friday 15 November. During this term Nieuwe Instituut will organize various public programs and workshops related to the exhibition.

More information about Garden Futures

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Images: Accompanying images can be downloaded here.

Contact:

Robin van Essel | Press Officer | r.vanessel@nieuweinstituut.nl | +31 (0)6 3803 9218