Museum for Art and History Brussels

Jubelpark / Parc du Cinquantenaire, 23-9-2006

Spinvis (Mechelen, 15-9-2006)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

It's hard to find really nice music from the Netherlands and it's even harder to find brilliant music in Dutch. Most artists, singing either English or Dutch, make boring commercial tunes with lyrics that are faulty and meaningless. Of-course there are exceptions and Spinvis is one of those.

Spinvis makes cut and paste music with poetic lyrical sketches of (Dutch) life. It's more or less a project of one guy but live he brings a whole band with drums, guitars, cello, trumpets and many many more instruments.
And the effect is perfect! The musicians have much fun making the music, the lyrics are funny and pretty, the experience is very enjoyable ;-)

I think this music is also quite nice for non-Dutch speakers but it's a lot nicer when you can understand the lyrics because they are so beautiful sometimes.
So if you don't speak Dutch you can always give it a try; if you do know Dutch you should definitely listen to some songs!

Check out the site here (try 'disco' for songs)

Bat gone to heaven

Yesterday I found a little dead bat hanging on the ceiling between some wooden beams at work. It's almost mummified and is now part of my collection ;-)
I have never been able to study a bat this close so I'm happy! Here's the ode to my little dead brown bat ;-)

Gallery 'Het Vijfde Huis' (the fifth house), Antwerpen

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

If you are ever in the neighbourhood you should check out this gallery because it has very nice exhibits and interesting artists.

their site: http://hetvijfdehuis.com
Location: Reyndersstraat 5, Antwerpen

Museum Mayer van den Bergh (Antwerpen, 10-9-2006)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

Another discovery this year! And another free visit ;-)

This museum is actually based on the collection of one man (Felix Mayer van den Bergh). Sadly he died young so he never got to complete his brilliant collection and he never saw his museum. The museum was founded by the collector's mother. And we are very happy that she did!

The collection ranges from medieval to renaissance and from various objects to paintings. There are some beautiful treasures here!
One of the most famous paintings in the collection is 'Mad Meg' (Dulle Griet) by Bruegel the Elder.

The museum itself is also another treasure as it is situated in a 16th century house. All the rooms are decorated and the paintings and objects are exhibited in a very homely setting. This makes the museum a very nice place to be indeed!

The museum site
More info also on http://amuseevous.be

Other free visits on this day: Rubenshuis (very fast), Ethnographic Museum (interesting Maroc exhibit). You can find reviews from last year for these locations here somewhere ;-)

Sneak Preview!

Celebrating my new job ;-)

This week I have started my new job working in the city archive of Antwerp. It has just moved to a new and very big location and the archive isn't open for the public yet. If you live in Antwerp (Belgium) you can see part of the building on monumentendag ;-)

I will ofcourse show a lot more of this place through the next weeks ;-)