From 9 September, Singer Laren will present ‘Singer Highlights’: a selection of masterpieces from its own collection. Museum director Jan Rudolph de Lorm, who will be leaving the museum on 1 December, has curated the exhibition to showcase a selection of his favourite works. He will be going through the collection for the final time, choosing a free, intuitive presentation: no fixed themes or chronological order, but surprising combinations that invite a fresh perspective. What makes the Singer Laren collection so special, according to De Lorm? ‘The artworks are colourful, exuberant and comforting. With this presentation, I invite our visitors to immerse themselves in the Singer sense of freedom, expressed in beauty.’
Dutch Impressionism and Modernism flourished on the ‘holy ground’ of Laren and Blaricum in the early 20thcentury. From these roots, Singer Laren has grown over the past decades into a leading museum for these art movements — a development to which Jan Rudolph de Lorm has dedicated himself. Since his appointment, his ambition has been to collect and present highlights from Modernism as well as Impressionism, the period in which art freed itself from the rules of depicting visible reality and artists expressed their feelings using pure colours. De Lorm feels a strong connection with these innovators, particularly with the so-called ‘ultra-moderns’: Jan Sluijters, Piet Mondriaan and Leo Gestel. In recent years, he has also added works by the Dutch avant-garde to the collection, including the recent acquisition ‘Souvenir de Dordrecht’ (1907) by Kees van Dongen.
Singer Highlights brings these efforts together. Not as a retrospective, but as an ode to the richness of Singer Laren’s collection. To mark the retirement of De Lorm, the book 100 Highlights, featuring his personal favourites from the collection, will be published in early December, accompanying the exhibition.