LAM Museum: The museum that makes your tummy growls!

It was an unintended visit, actually. My colleagues and I were cycling from Leiden to Lisse to enjoy the exquisitely colourful view of spring tulip blooming before we decided to stop at Keukenhof and took a short visit there. Unfortunately, we came at the wrong time: Keukenhof was super packed with tourists and the line was far too long! As we were too tired to continue our journey back with a rumbling tummy, we decided to take a break at a park across Keukenhof and see the Keukenhof castle.

The sunny weather hit the park and castle with warm contrast of brick and green colours but across the garden, there stood a building in modern architecture with similar brick colour. We walked and stood at the front door, having no clue what kind of building that was. A banner on the facade helped a bit: LAM Lisser Art Museum. As we were discussing whether to come inside or not (as some of us left the wallet and museumkaart at home), a lady wave at us and signaled to come inside.

"Welkom bij het Lisser Art Museum!" she greeted us warmly, as warm as the weather. "What make you reluctant to come inside?" We explained the situation and she said, "LAM just opened the door for the public few months ago and during this period, we offered free entrance." Hey it's our lucky day!

LAM was initiated by VandenBroek Foundation, the family that runs the Dirk van den Broek (Dirk) supermarket. They decided to build a museum dedicated to food and consumption. In autumn 2018, the museum opened the door for the first time. The museum houses a collection of artworks related to food and consumption, ranging from the middle-age (still life) to the contemporary period. Like, literally everything about food consumption: from the religious interpretation of foods, to the critics on excessive consumerism (hey, isn't it ironic that it's build by a foundation that runs a supermarket?), to challenging the role of food and feasting in our culture.

We were equipped with the tablet as the virtual guide. There would be very little explanation on the artworks, the lady warned. We were required to create an account for the guide. She explained that the guide would only work exclusively inside the building and if we encounter an artwork that we wanted to further at home, we could save it in a page so we would be able to read it later after leaving the museum. She kindly guided us around the ground floor. Pointing at a installation, she asked, "Can you guess what it is?"

"I Found it" (Robert Barta)

I had trouble understanding it, when a friend shouted, "That's the missing piece from the Apple logo!" And yes! Comically the artist exclaimed that he has found the missing legendary piece. It was a very nice beginning, indeed, and I was too excited to explore the rest of the exhibition.

The journey began from the highest floor. As we got out of the elevator, we were welcomed by the colourful artworks in contrast with the pale white background. The natural lighting combined with the warm settings just made the situation perfectly cozy. On the wall were paintings across centuries arranged in the salon-style, mostly depicting the middle-age and modern still-life paintings in abstract, realistic to hyper-realistic movements. In the middle of the room was the 3D sculpture of the still-life. My itching hands couldn't wait to make a sketch of it! It would be much appealing, however, if the museum could bring the hands-on activity and encourage the visitors to draw the installation according to their own style and interpretation and exhibit the results at the end of the tour.

"Nihilist Table (II)" (Folkert de Jong)

The stairs that took us down to the next level also served as a seat to enjoy a very attractive artworks that occupied the whole walls from the base of the first floor to the ceiling of the top floor! It was one of my favorite artworks in the museum: the installation consisted of sculptures and sculptures and sculptures of foods that an average Dutch consumed in a year. It was repetitions after repetitions of eggs, milks, stroopwafels, gouda cheese, beer, wine, pizzas, pineapples, candies and many unexpected things that we couldn't remember have ever consumed. As we sat on the stairs, we contemplated on how much foods we had put inside our stomach and how mind blowing can this small tummy handle that much in a daily basis! Also, it triggered us to contemplate on how massive a food and beverage industry should be to contain the demand on foods the society need to survive, on how consumerism linked to the excessive use of plastics, etc.

"The Food Chain Project" (Itamar Gilboa)

The next one was also very exciting to see: a table full of exotic, mouth-watering and extravagant fruits, hams, cooked animals and alcohols. The colorful outfits of the participants on the background blended perfectly with the colourful dishes. The artist did not only enhance the beauty of the installations but it also contained a deep meaning: the feast also depicted the situation of orgy, we were encouraged to think about our own excessive behaviours on achieving sexual pleasure, high-quality food and social status.

"Last Supper" (Yinka Shonibare)

Out trip continued to another wing: various paintings, installations and videos were diplayed on the wall and floor. The arrangement might looked incoherent, disorganized, packed and unattractive to see at a glance. But as we examined it one by one, there jumped the charm and allure of every piece. One artwork that gave a unique perspective was "eggalone.com" by Rafael Rozendaal. It was not a painting, not a sculpture and not even a video, but a website! The artist challenged the common art market, arguing that the art should be experienced by everyone, everywhere and everytime, even when the artwork (website) has been sold. Can't figure it out? Just visit the artwork here: eggalone.com!

Another one that was no less interesting was a sculpture of a bare stomach with auras around, mimicking the outline shape of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It looks like a mundane artwork, but the interpretation could be biblical as well: the pot that shaped into a pregnant stomach symbolizes Jesus, who is known as the bread of life, therefore a food for us, while the aura that shaped around it means the holiness of Jesus and His mother, Mary. We need a contemporary religious art (or contemporary art that could be interpreted with religious message) like this!

"Onze Lieve Vrouwe van Voeding (Our Lady of Nutrition)" (George Belzer)

Descending the stairs, there were still many artworks with various styles that are interesting to be explored. Unfortunately, since my time was running short, I needed to rush. This section also exhibited artworks from some famous artists, such as Do Ho Suh, who is well-known as the artists with his colourful transparent installations of households pieces made of iron wire and silk, that could be easily transferred in a suitcase! LAM Museum housed a piece of Suh's yellow oven.

"Stove" (Do Ho Suh) with foreground of "Hunger Winter-Food Drop" (George Belzer)

The ground floor exhibited other interesting artworks, like this sculpture that might resemble Hamburglar, the antagonist in McDonaldland. The weary and gruesome look in this sculpture most likely resonated our looks when consuming too much unhealthy fast food. That was a very typical work of Jake and Dinos Chapman who created provocative arts, and this one was a part of the series The Chapman Family Collection (2002) that criticized the appropriation of ethnographic and fetish relic objects, by associating it with capitalism (McDonaldworld).

Talk no more, my stomach rumbled when I saw this detailed stack of sandwich sculpture that will make you mouth watering soon in an instant! Did you feel this pile of sandwiches alluring or even grossed you out?

"CFC74812577 (The Chapman Family Collection)" (Jake and Dinos Chapman)

"Revolving Sandwicesh" (Stefan Gross)

Overall, I was very contended with the variety of artworks the museum offered, the curation was just excellent! One that I found a little bit disarray is the packed installations on the first floor. Also, it was such a pity that we couldn't access the artworks remotely unless we come to the museum and save our favorites on their guide platform (what an interesting marketing technique, I might say!). The architecture just blended perfectly with the artworks inside as well as the beautiful nature outside. Surprisingly, even though the museum had just been launched for few months, it had won the Dutch Culture Award 2019 for the category Culture Award. Afterall, I found that the messages from the artworks were abounding, as it also brought us to the emotions we could ever experience: happy, anxious, satisfied, thirsty, admiration, and also... hungry!

Looks like my friend have been waiting impatiently for me as I always took quite a long time whenever I'm in a museum :P I thought it was the perfect time to fill our rumbling tummy. Oh LAM, you made my stomach empty and our heart full!