Maaike Schoorel Solo Exhibition

Focus Louisa Willet-Holthuysen

She focuses in particular on Louisa Willet-Holthuysen, the collector who, in 1895, gave the building with its completely newly furnished interiors full of decorations in French Neo-Louis XVI style to the municipality with the order to turn it into a museum.

Women's role

Schoorel assumes the personage of Louisa Willet-Holthuysen and plays with her passion for animals and nature. She also draws associations between her and another female museum founder of that time, Sophia Lopez Suasso-de Bruijn, who laid the foundation for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In doing so, Schoorel offers a reinterpretation and reevaluation of women’s roles in the art world, then and now.