How curiosity, history, and a different way of visiting exhibitions changed my relationship with art.

Five years ago, I probably would have disliked the Willem de Kooning exhibition I visited this week at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Abstract paintings, distorted figures, strange faces, and compositions that seem almost chaotic. I would have looked at them for a few seconds, wondered what I was supposed to see, and moved on to the next painting. But this time, something completely different happened. I spent hours discovering figures hidden inside abstract compositions, examining layers of paint, studying the artist's drawings, and trying to understand the decisions behind his work. At one point, I even found myself comparing his paintings to anime, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, and contemporary street art.

An entire world seemed to open in front of me. And as I walked through the exhibition, I couldn't help thinking about how much my relationship with museums has changed.

 If you are visiting Amsterdam before 17 January 2027, you can book Rijksmuseum tickets here.

From finding museums boring to discovering their stories

I didn't always enjoy museums. I remember walking through galleries, looking at objects or paintings, reading a little, and moving on. There was always so much information to absorb. Every artwork had a description, every room had an introduction, and sometimes entire walls were covered with explanations about historical context, artistic movements, and the significance of the collection. Trying to read everything felt exhausting, and after a while, I would simply stop paying attention. Audio guides seemed like a good alternative because someone could explain what I was looking at, but I was still following someone else's interpretation rather than making my own discoveries.

My interest in museums actually began with history rather than art. I've always enjoyed discovering the stories behind places, buildings, and historical events, and gradually I started joining museum meetups where the explanations behind sculptures, monuments, and paintings made everything more interesting. An object was no longer simply an object. It belonged to a particular moment in history, someone had created it for a reason, and there were people, decisions and circumstances behind it. It's also one of the reasons I enjoy walks with Ommetje met Tom in Amsterdam. A street, a building or a monument can seem completely ordinary until someone tells you its story, and suddenly you see it differently.

Little by little, that curiosity about history became an interest in art. I began to realise that exhibitions could be much more than collections of beautiful or historically important objects. They could tell the story of a person's life, their decisions, influences, experiments, and changing ideas. Today, I'm particularly fascinated by retrospectives because they allow me to follow how an artist's work developed over time. I want to understand what was happening in their life, why they changed direction, which techniques they explored, and how their experiences eventually shaped what they created.

During the De Kooning exhibition, for example, I discovered that he spent many years working on commercial commissions before his breakthrough as a painter. He designed displays, created illustrations, and experimented with materials and techniques that later became part of his artistic vocabulary. His first solo exhibition came after decades of artistic development, something that reminded me how misleading the idea of sudden success can be. From the outside, we often see the finished work and the recognition that follows, but a retrospective allows us to discover the years of effort, uncertainty, and experimentation that came before it.

Learning to look before reading

Perhaps the biggest change in how I experience museums has been learning to look before trying to understand everything. When I enter an exhibition room today, I usually begin by reading the introduction to understand the main subject and the context of the collection. Then I look around and let my eyes decide where to go. I don't necessarily follow the order of the artworks, and I don't worry if I skip one or two. Sometimes a colour catches my attention, sometimes it's a face, an unusual composition or a detail I cannot immediately recognise. Whatever attracts my curiosity is where I stop.

I spend time looking at the artwork before reading its description or listening to the audio guide. I try to notice what interests me, what I recognise, what I find beautiful or strange, and what the image reminds me of. Only afterwards do I look for the explanation, and here's the funny thing: I now read more and listen to more than I ever did before. The difference is that I'm genuinely interested in the answers. Sometimes the information confirms something I had already noticed, sometimes it reveals a completely unexpected detail, and sometimes it changes my interpretation altogether. Instead of telling me what to see, the information fills the gaps in something I've already started exploring.

I've also stopped thinking that a successful museum visit means looking at every artwork or following the exhibition in exactly the order intended. There are pieces that capture my attention immediately and others that simply don't, and I'm comfortable with that. I would rather spend ten minutes looking at one painting that fascinates me than rush through an entire room simply to say I've seen everything. Visiting a museum isn't necessarily about seeing everything. It's about really seeing something.

Entering the fabulous world of Willem de Kooning

The De Kooning exhibition was a wonderful example of how this approach has changed my experience. Early in the visit, I encountered Excavation, a large abstract painting from 1950 that initially seemed difficult to make sense of. As I spent time looking at it, then reading about the work and listening to the audio guide, figures and shapes gradually began to emerge from the composition. What fascinated me even more was discovering how much work was hidden beneath its apparently spontaneous appearance. De Kooning had spent months applying paint, scraping it away, covering sections and revealing earlier layers. The closer I looked, the more evidence of that process I could see. What seemed almost effortless from a distance turned out to be the result of an extraordinarily complex creative process.

Later, I encountered Two Women on a Wharf. The audio guide suggested that the longer you looked, the easier it became to recognise the figures, but my experience was almost the opposite. I saw the two women immediately. By that point, I had spent enough time with De Kooning's work that I was beginning to recognise his visual language. What became interesting was moving closer to the painting and watching those recognisable figures dissolve into abstract marks, colours and textures. From a distance, I could see two women; up close, I could appreciate an almost completely abstract composition. The same painting offered two very different experiences depending on where I stood.

The paintings of women were particularly fascinating because their faces and bodies were distorted, exaggerated, and sometimes almost grotesque, yet I found them beautiful. Some reminded me of animated characters, others made me think of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, and in another drawing I noticed a resemblance to something I had seen at STRAAT Museum, Amsterdam's street art museum. These weren't necessarily connections the artist intended, but they were associations that appeared naturally as I looked. Later, I read De Kooning's explanation that he liked the grotesque because he found it more joyous, and suddenly those strange figures made even more sense. The exaggeration wasn't necessarily something disturbing; it could also be playful, humorous, and full of energy.

By the time I finished the exhibition, I felt as though I had entered what I jokingly started calling The Fabulous World of Willem de Kooning. His paintings were no longer simply strange compositions that I was trying to understand. They had become a world of recognisable gestures, figures, materials, experiments and ideas, and I was beginning to understand how those elements connected. Five years ago, I might have dismissed much of this work as confusing or unappealing. This time, I found myself wanting to look closer.

When looking at art changes how you see your own work

As a photographer, visiting exhibitions has also gradually changed the way I think about my own work. For years, I've considered photography primarily my profession. Most of what I create is commissioned: someone hires me to photograph their family, a wedding, a trip, or an important moment in their life. There is a purpose behind the photographs, a client and a job to deliver. That doesn't mean there isn't an artistic approach to the work, but I've always made a distinction between commissioned photography and art, even though that distinction has become increasingly difficult to define.

I remember a visit to Milan when a couple of photographers saw one of the images on my Instagram feed and told me it looked like a painting. I hadn't really considered that photograph in those terms before, and their comment stayed with me. What if there is an artistic direction in my photography that I haven't fully explored? What if the personal photographs I make outside my commissions are something I should pay more attention to? Looking at paintings, studying the decisions behind them and understanding how artists develop their visual language has made those questions increasingly interesting.

The De Kooning exhibition brought some of those thoughts back, particularly when I discovered how much of his early career had been dedicated to commercial work. The techniques he learned through commissions didn't simply disappear when he began concentrating on painting; they became part of his artistic development. That doesn't mean every commissioned photograph is necessarily art, but perhaps the boundary between professional work and artistic expression is less clear than I've always imagined. It's a question I'm still exploring, and I don't feel any urgency to arrive at a definitive answer.

Discovering what catches my eye

I don't think I'm anywhere close to knowing where this exploration will take me. Perhaps I'm still years away from discovering what my personal artistic direction might be, but something has already changed in the way I approach photography. I've started taking my camera with me much more often, almost every day, not because I have a client waiting for photographs or a particular assignment to complete, but simply because I want to photograph what I notice around me.

Sometimes it's the light, sometimes it's an unexpected composition, an interesting colour or an ordinary detail that suddenly catches my attention. I'm learning to explore without necessarily knowing what I'm looking for, and I find that fascinating. It's surprisingly similar to the way I now visit museums: I begin with curiosity, follow whatever attracts my attention and discover the story along the way. I don't need to know exactly where that process will lead, and perhaps that's part of what makes it so interesting.

If you think museums are boring, I understand because I used to feel the same way. And I don't believe the answer is necessarily to learn more about art history before visiting one. Start with something that already interests you, whether that's history, architecture, fashion, photography, design or simply the stories of people who lived in a different time. When you enter a gallery, give yourself permission to look around before trying to understand everything. Find something that catches your attention, spend some time with it, and then read the explanation or listen to the audio guide. You might discover that the information becomes much more interesting once you've developed your own curiosity about what you're seeing.

You don't need to appreciate every painting, understand every artistic movement, or visit every room to enjoy an exhibition. Five years ago, I probably would have disliked the Willem de Kooning exhibition. This week, I walked out feeling as though an entire world had opened in front of me. And perhaps that's what I love most about museums now: they don't simply teach me about the world. They keep teaching me how to look at it.

Joanna Pantigoso

Your Vacation Photographer in Amsterdam

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