2025: The Sacred Life of Plants

Each year, the Van Eesteren Museum is centered around an year theme. The theme for 2025 is The Sacred Life of Plants! Following the Basque philosopher Michael Marder, who views plants as beings with their own form of subjectivity, the Van Eesteren Museum will focus for an entire year on plants, trees, and the landscape.

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With this annual theme, the museum wants to make an original contribution to the current issue of climate change and shine a new light on the Nieuw-West district. The greenest district in Amsterdam is still associated with stone and concrete, even though the inclusion of nature and the original landscape structure were important drivers of the original plan for New West.

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The title of the annual theme is a reference to Stevie Wonder's album Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants (1979).

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Speciaal voor het jaarthema 'The Sacred Life of Plants' schreef Saskia de Wit de longread Confectie en eigenheid: De confectieborders van Mien Ruys als bouwstenen voor gewortelde tuinen. Scroll naar beneden en lees alles over de confectieborders van Mien Ruys.

The second major exhibition in the annual theme is about four female architects who have all worked on Amsterdam's overall expansion plan: and The exhibition not only shows the individual work of these largely forgotten architects, but also, above all, the coherence in the ideas about architecture of the four. The exhibition shows various archival material by the four architects from the Amsterdam City Archives and Nieuwe Instituut, photos, videos, sound clips, drawings and objects. The exhibition highlights a 1 on 1 element of the architects. In the an important architectural design is central. The exhibition is designed by Bureau Ira Koers and graphic design by Vanessa van Dam with content advice from Ellen van Kessel and Linda Vlassenrood. The exhibition is made possible in part by Nathalie de Vries (MVRDV) and Marlies Rohmer Architecture & Urbanism.