We sometimes have a tendency to focus on mutual differences: we like to put everything in one box. But isn't there also a strong entanglement between culture and nature? A border zone where they merge? Where 1 + 1 might equal 3?

The Middelheim Museum is an excellent place to think about the cross-pollination between humans and nature. Isn't the park itself also a mixture of human ingenuity and natural power? People plan and plant, but it is nature that grows and flourishes. We also recognize a reflection on the relationship between people and nature in the works of art we selected for this theme.

Garden culture

This zone is the core of the Middelheim Park, where humans settled centuries ago and built a farm and later a castle. This is where the fusion between nature and culture started.

We know that the residents focused on horticulture: they did not just let nature take its course, but built melon greenhouses, developed a special viticulture technique and grew special orchids and camellias. Middelheim was a hotspot for horticulturists and plant tourism. The gigantic azalea bush and the centuries-old bald cypress are still witnesses to this cultivation of nature.

Figurative merging

Man and nature never completely separate from each other. You see this in the sculptures that depict a human being, but represent a natural phenomenon: in the first half of the 20th century, artists sometimes used a female nude figure to depict a river, sea or rock. They are inspired by the beauty of nature, but at the same time we see in their work how society viewed women at the time. It is never the 'civilized man', but always the 'untamed woman' who represents wild nature.

Conversely, we also tend to see human feelings and qualities in plants and animals. We give animals personalities, or breathe life into man-made objects.

Literal fusion

Artists also literally express the entanglement of humans and nature in hybrid creations: intermediate forms in which humans and animals, technology and nature, plants and humans merge into one being. These hybrids can be lovely or monstrous, hopeful or confrontational.

The boundary between the artificial and the natural is also blurred in the 'hortisculptures'. We see a plant, but it is not bound by the laws of growth, flowering and dying. For example, these sculptures make us think about human interventions in nature: what are the consequences if we continue to select, breed and graft?

This theme examines the perceived contradiction between humans and nature, and aims to stimulate reflection on the different ways in which they are intertwined. The Middelheim Museum is the perfect place for that. Not only the park is a fusion of human effort and natural growth. Art in greenery also brings people and nature closer together, and shows how things have never been different.

Entanglement

Artworks

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Interactive plan