Birch-house for Van Loon

Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam 1996

Museum van Loon is a seventeenth-century canal house with a historic interior on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. It provides a glimpse of the life that the prominent Amsterdam Van Loon family led and the role of art within it. 

In 1996, Philippa van Loon, the youngest member of the Van Loon family, became chairman of the Van Loon Foundation, which is responsible for managing the museum of the same name. The first exhibition that Philippa van Loon organized as a chairman, and thereby also the first contemporary art exhibition hosted in the museum, was Exchanging Interiors.

For Exchanging Interiors, Irene Fortuyn created the work Birch-house for Van Loon, a replica of the canal house that she placed as a bird house in the garden of the canal house. The bird house is furnished with the same fireplaces, panels and wallpaper as the canal house. Bird seed has been laid on the balconies.

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