Audiotour and drawing book for kids

From an old goat to a lemon and a pepper. Past the beautiful Wisteria to Edith and Dolly. Daydream in a maze, and come face to face with giant spiders. In a special audiotour available from 24 December, children’s author and illustrator Daan Remmerts de Vries will guide kids (8+) through forty very diverse artworks from Kunstmuseum Den Haag’s collection. They will be able to discover, in unexpected ways, more about the art of George Hendrik Breitner, Claude Monet, Egon Schiele, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Auguste Rodin, Vincent van Gogh, Paula Rego, Marlene Dumas and others. The tour is available in Dutch and English on the Kunstmuseum app.

‘Good grief! What’s that? It’s weird! It’s… nasty… What is this thing sitting or hanging on the chair?  A thing with high-heeled shoes. A thing with floppy legs and a kind of miniskirt’. The new audiotour allows kids to experience the museum in an entirely different way. Remmerts de Vries strikes exactly the right tone, and knows just how to guide children through a museum full of work by some of the finest Dutch and international artists. Anyone can listen to the audiotour free of charge by downloading the Kunstmuseum app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

What’s that mess?
The audiotour prompts kids to think about why something is art. ‘What sort of a daub is this? Any kid could do better!!’ The tour also considers how artists work, and listeners will also discover that art can surprise you and that a work of art can be like a time machine. Looking at a beach view by Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch, for example, they hear: ‘This is how the Netherlands looked about a hundred years ago! No dog-walkers. No kite surfers. No beach cafés playing loud music. No joggers. No rows of wind turbines on the horizon. No helicopters. No apartment blocks. And no masses of sunbathers’.

Drawing book to take home
After visiting the museum kids can let their creative juices flow at home, inspired by the art they have seen during the tour. A free drawing book is available at the information desk, with all kinds of exercises and sketches by Remmerts de Vries. He sets kids to work with ‘swipes of colour’, as used by Leo Gestel, or tells them to look in the mirror and draw a colourful portrait in the style of Kees van Dongen.  

About Daan Remmerts de Vries
Daan Remmerts de Vries is a well-known writer and illustrator of books for children and adults, who has won multiple awards. He is also a painter and musician. Remmerts de Vries recently won the Theo Thijssen Prize for lifetime achievement. He produced his first children’s art book - Meneer Kandinsky was een schilder – in 2010, for the successful series published by Kunstmuseum Den Haag and Leopold.

The audiotour and the drawing book are sponsored by the Hofman & Sip Fund and Stichting De Versterking.