Architect Daan Roosegaarde’s light exhibition brings thousands to Groningen Museum

The Presence light exhibition by artist and inventor Daan Roosegaarde in the Groninger Museum attracted 45 thousand people since opening on June 22nd. An average off 6 thousand people visited the museum per week to see the exhibition, compared to the museum's usual summer average of 4 thousand visitors per week, director Andreas Bluhm said to Dagblad van het Noorden.

"This summer we have the best visitor figures in the history of the museum", Bluhm said, adding that the exhibition is also strikingly popular among kids. Of the 45 thousand visitors, some 7 thousand were under the age of 18. "On average 4 to 5 percent of our visitors are young people. For Roosegaarde, that percentage is 15 percent. His work appeals to all ages.

Presence is Roosegaarde's first major solo museum project. He made the exhibition especially for the Groninger Museum and is pleased that it is popular. "We wanted to make something that we loved ourselves. Something for playful people. We wanted you to be able to touch everything, precisely because that is generally prohibited in museums", he said to the newspaper by telephone from New York.

Presence is in the Groninger Museum until January 2020.