From February 28, 2026, the National Museum Huis van het boek will present the exhibition ‘Apocalypse, Fear and Hope’. For centuries, and especially in times of crisis, writers and artists have attempted to depict the end of the world. But also what the world will look like after the end. The exhibition showcases these depictions through centuries-old books from the museum's collection and works by twelve contemporary artists.
The urgency of this theme is perhaps greater today than ever before. Climate change, geopolitical tensions, pandemics, and social disruption evoke apocalyptic feelings in many people. At the same time, we see an explosion of visions of the future in art, film, and literature, some dystopian, others hopeful. This exhibition offers a historical perspective on a contemporary existential question.
Perhaps the best-known example is the Revelation of John, the book of the Bible that we now know as the Apocalypse. This nearly 2000-year-old text proves to be surprisingly relevant today. It shows how creative imaginings of the end throughout the centuries not only evoke fear, but also offer space for new perspectives on the future.
Ancient books and contemporary art
The exhibition includes Jacob van Maerlant's Rhyming Bible from 1332, the Liber Chronicarum, a 16th-century Bible with woodcuts by Erhard Altdorfer, and a 15th-century manuscript of La Cité de Dieu. These masterpieces enter into dialogue with books and art by, among others: Etel Adnan, R. Crumb, Paul van der Eerden, Susanna Inglada, Susanne Khalil Yusef, Stan Klamer, Yubin Lee, Daisy Madden-Wells, Toshi Maruki, Frans Masereel, Johannes Mashego Segogela, Lana Mesić, Rory Pilgrim, Marisa Rappard, Carolein Smit and Müge Yilmaz.
Alongside late medieval woodcuts of the Dance of Death, ceramic works by Carolein Smit are presented. The South African artist Johannes Mashego Segogela depicts in his sculptures the same struggle between good and evil as medieval miniature painters did five centuries earlier. Seventeenth-century engravings of floods, earthquakes, and the plague, as well as the anti-war prints of Frans Masereel, portray catastrophes that evoke the end of the world. Hope for a better future can be found in the work of Müge Yilmaz, whose sculptures function as a bookcase for her collection of feminist science fiction literature about the possibility of a better future. For what comes after the end?
The exhibition 'Apocalypse, fear and hope' has been made possible in part through the financial support of the Ministerie of OCW, the Vermeulen Brauckman Stichting, the Doopsgezind Predikfonds, Stichting De Zaaier, and Stichting Vrienden Huis van het boek.
IMAGES
-Augustinus, Cité de Dieu, Paris, around1478-1480. Coll. Rijksmuseum Huis van het boek, photo The Book Photographer
- Carolein Smit, Witjes wand | The Warrior, the Dog and the Goat 2025, ceramic wall sculpture. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Fontana Amsterdam
- Toshi Maruki, Hiroshima no pika Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, New York, 1980
Coll. Rijksmuseum Huis van het boek, photo The Book Photographer
-Augustinus, Cité de Dieu, Paris, around1478-1480. Coll. Rijksmuseum Huis van het boek, photoThe Book Photographer
