Book Launch – C.H. van der Leeuw: A Whimsical Idealist of Dutch Modernism
Nieuwe Instituut and NAi Booksellers are celebrating the publication of a book about Rotterdam architecture patron Kees van der Leeuw, who, among other things, commissioned the construction of the Van Nelle factory. On this occasion, biographer Leonard Kooij, who has been campaigning for decades to preserve the factory as a world industrial heritage site, will discuss the relationship between the icons of modernism in Rotterdam and Dessau with Werner Möller, head of the Bauhaus Foundation’s collection. Our very own museum villa, Sonneveld House, plays a key role in the creation of the book and the exploration of “simultaneous modernism” in the two cities, to which the guests have already dedicated an exhibition in 2016.
10 May 2024 15:00 - 16:30
C.H. van der Leeuw
“Kees van der Leeuw was an exponent of a bourgeois elite with a strong sense of richesse oblige, as Leonard Kooij puts it. For example, Kees worked unpaid for social developments and also carried out the wishes of various cabinets. The spiritual father of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Rotterdam and a National Historic Landmark in Los Angeles, he was a connector, tireless propagandist, patron and innovator in areas such as architecture and urban planning, working conditions and mental health care. He was a global citizen, a visionary and a networker."
Speakers
From the blurb of the book that will be launched at this conference: “Leonard Kooij, like Kees van der Leeuw, was born and raised on the edge of the ‘Land of Hoboken’ in Rotterdam. In his youth, the rubble of the bombed-out city centre was his playground. He grew up with post-war interfaces with environments and developments that are also discussed in this book, namely the shipping quarter, post-war reconstruction, Van Nelle, functionalism and globalisation. The author himself has lived and worked abroad for over 20 years. This background has helped him to understand Kees from a transcendent and broader perspective.”
The origins of Van der Leeuw’s biography go back to the time when Kooij’s grandparents’ house, Sonneveld House, was declared a museum house and came under the management of the Nieuwe Instituut. Leonard Kooij is co-founder of the Van Nelle Factory World Heritage Foundation. In 2016, Kooij was one of the initiators of the exhibition Simultaan Modernisme [Simultaneous Modernism], in which the Van Nelle Factory, Sonneveld House, the Chabot Museum and the Kiefhoek in Rotterdam, together with the Bauhaus in Dessau, showed how a lively exchange existed between the two cities in the field of avant-garde architecture, art and design in the interwar period: “There was an intense exchange of ideas for the betterment of a divided society.”
Werner Möller is head of the collections department at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. In this capacity, he co-organised the exhibition Simultanität der Moderne in his host city. The collection of 49,000 objects is the second largest collection of Bauhaus-related objects in the world. The Nieuwe Bouwen style that characterises Sonneveld House and the Van Nelle factory is closely linked to the Bauhaus not only in formal and (art) historical terms: in 1926, Kees van der Leeuw struck up a lifelong friendship with founder Walter Gropius and “Mrs Bauhaus”, Ise Gropius-Frank.
The moderator is Marlies Crince, who is closely involved with the Van Nelle Factory World Heritage Foundation and the exhibition Simultaan Modernisme – Simultanität der Moderne [Simultaneous Modernism]. She was also an early contributor to the book Dr. C.H. van der Leeuw. Een grillig idealist [A Whimsical Idealist].