A Turbulent 2025 for the Drents Museum

2026: Amrita Sher-Gil, Angkor and Beauty of the Beast

The Drents Museum in Assen has had a turbulent 2025. It was a year with a dark cloud due to the art theft at the end of January during the exhibition Dacia – Kingdom of Gold and Silver. The museum expects to close the year with 167,500 visitors, around 117,500 of whom visited the museum in Assen and nearly 50,000 visited Drents Museum De Buitenplaats—an all-time record for the museum in Eelde. With full confidence, the museum looks ahead to 2026, with major international exhibitions on the Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil and on the archaeological finds from Angkor in Cambodia.

General Director Robert van Langh took over from Harry Tupan on 1 November, following his retirement. “It is remarkable how the Drents Museum team has straightened its back and shown resilience after this difficult period. We thank everyone for the many messages of support we have received this year, and of course we hope that the stolen objects will be recovered soon.”

The exhibitions of 2025 received very high ratings from visitors. People of the road, about traveller culture in Drenthe and co-created by the museum with travellers from Coevorden, Emmen and Hoogeveen, scored an average of 8.5. The current exhibition Microcosmos – The World in a Wunderkammer, a visual spectacle in which the magic of collecting comes to life, has been receiving many enthusiastic reviews and currently scores an average of 8.6 (on view until 1 March). With the collection presentation Labyrinthia, the museum was nominated for the VriendenLoterij Museum Prize 2025 under the theme “the multisensory museum” and achieved second place with 11,700 public votes.

Record visitor numbers for DM De Buitenplaats in Eelde

After the opening exhibition Power to the Flower set the tone, DM De Buitenplaats continued its success with The Mucha Experience. Visitors rated the fully digital presentation—with projections of the life and work of Art Nouveau master Alphonse Mucha—an average of 8.1, and superlatives abounded: from “fairytale-like beauty” and “we felt as though we were in another world” to “visitor identity: recharged!”. Visitor numbers consequently rose to a record level for DM De Buitenplaats, falling just short of 50,000 by the end of 2025. This success has given the museum every reason to extend The Mucha Experience until Sunday 29 March 2026.

2026: Amrita Sher-Gil, Angkor and Beauty of the Beast

From 22 March, the Drents Museum will present the first major Dutch exhibition of the Hungarian–Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941). Despite her short life, Amrita Sher-Gil, an icon of modern Indian art, left behind an impressive body of work in which modern European painting merges with Indian themes and stories. The exhibition Amrita Sher-Gil “ –Europe belongs to Picasso, India belongs to me” will feature around sixty paintings and drawings from the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. Her work is regarded as national heritage and rarely leaves India. Next autumn (2026), Europe will host, for the first time, the world’s largest religious monument in the exhibition Angkor – The Mystery of Cambodia. Some 120 original objects from Angkor will come to Assen. Angkor is one of Cambodia’s most popular tourist destinations and is even featured on the national flag. At its peak in the 12th century, the city was the largest metropolis in the world. Most of the archaeological finds on display in the exhibition are over 1,000 years old.

At DM De Buitenplaats in Eelde, the new exhibition Beauty of the Beast – Animals in Art Nouveau opens on Saturday 18 April 2026. For centuries, animals have inspired artists with their beauty and rich symbolism. Around 1900, the depiction of animals played an especially prominent role. Ceramics and furniture were decorated with sea creatures, birds and insects, while their colours and patterns were incorporated into textiles and prints. The rise of zoos, such as Artis, also allowed artists for the first time to draw animals from life. The exhibition Beauty of the Beast brings together hidden treasures and crowd favourites from the Drents Museum’s rich collection of art around 1900, creating a magical world of animals.