Field Trip III: Art & Spirit

Day 2 began with Morning silence, monastery gardens and collection history.At the “Blue Hour” we did a quiet morning walk through the monastery gardens, accompanied by artist Ingeborg Meulendijks. After breakfast, we met Brother Roland, who guided us through the monastery grounds and told us about Steyl’s special historical role in the context of the Steyler Missionaries and the perspective of the monastic community on current church policy.

Afterwards, we visited the Steyl Missie Museum, a place with an ethnographic collection and natural history objects that has been built up by missionaries over more than 140 years. It was created to capture the supposedly ‚foreign world‘ that missionaries encountered on their travels, and to present various objects for viewing. It remains largely unchanged from when it opened in the 1930s, strongly reflecting the colonial perspective of that time. For this reason, it is sometimes difficult to bear and is often referred to as a ‚museum within a museum‘. As well as numerous animal specimens, the museum exhibits art, everyday objects and even human remains. It is only in recent years that the collection has been subject to critical examination and comment. The director gave us an introduction and discussed certain exhibits and attempts at restitution. We agreed: This is an essential step, but it can only be the beginning. There we met artist Pii Daenen and author Mat Verberkt, who talked about their artistic and literary work with this unique place. The visit to this place resonated deeply with the group and raised questions about the responsibility we bear as artists and curators.

After lunch together, our program ended in the early afternoon—filled with impressions, encounters, and new perspectives on spirituality, tradition, responsibility and ethical artistic practice.