Image: Kröller-Müller Museum
The Kröller-Müller Museum has reopened Krijn Giezen’s ‘Kijk Uit Attention’ after restoring the work to what the museum says is its original state. The sculpture is described as an unusual walk through the forest that begins near John Rädecker’s ‘Gewei’ and ends at an 87-meter-long staircase rising above the trees, with a viewing point over Het Nationale Park De Hoge Veluwe.
The museum’s announcement frames the reopening as both a conservation project and a renewed public access point to one of the sculptural landscape works in its beeldentuin, or sculpture garden. In the museum’s collection listing, ‘Kijk Uit Attention’ is catalogued as a work by Krijn Giezen, dated 1986–2005, and made of hardwood, concrete and glass. The same listing gives its inventory number as KM 130.940 and notes that it was acquired with support from the BankGiro Loterij.
According to the museum, Giezen conceived ‘Kijk Uit Attention’ specifically for the sculpture garden as a “unusual walk through the forest.” The route is not a conventional viewing platform placed in the landscape, but a sequence of movement through the wooded setting leading to the stair structure. The work’s scale is underscored in the collection data, which lists its dimensions at 85158 × 2400 × 79358 cm.
Access is tightly controlled. The museum states that no more than twenty people may be on the work at once, visitors need a ticket, and admission depends on the weather. On the collection page, the opening hours are listed as 10.00 to 16.00, with closure in poor weather conditions including rain, strong wind, snow and thunder. The museum’s newsletter also says the work is open for visits but subject to these safety rules.
The reopening appears in a summer programme that also highlights other activities in and around the sculpture garden, including a Sonsbeek walk and concerts by Gravity Strings, but the museum’s main message on ‘Kijk Uit Attention’ is the restoration itself. It says the work has not only been repaired in recent years, but also returned to the form Giezen intended. The newsletter describes that process as bringing the piece back to its original state.
The Kröller-Müller Museum is in Otterlo, in the Netherlands, and sits within the setting of Het Nationale Park De Hoge Veluwe. Its collection and visitor pages present the sculpture garden as a place where art and landscape are closely linked, and ‘Kijk Uit Attention’ is one of the works through which that relationship is made physically walkable. Visitors wanting to see the reopened piece are directed to the museum’s ticketing system and asked to follow the QR-code instructions posted at the work itself.
