De Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam

The century of Juliana, a Queen and her ideals - exhibition design

The Age of Juliana, a queen and her Ideals is a royal exhibition that takes us into the life of this beloved former queen of the Netherlands. Juliana (1909-2004) was also known as ‘the princess next to the red carpet’, because she was quirky, modern and averse to protocol. During her life, the world has changed tremendously.

In this exhibition, we guide the visitor through all crucial phases of both Queen Juliana’s personal life and the major and minor events in the world and our Dutch society. In all those decades, the queen has shown various appearances and changing character traits, which are often captured on photo and film or with oil paint on canvas. We explicitly make connections between public, politics and personal and by doing so, we celebrate Juliana as she was: a woman of her time.

The impressive interior of the church is a stunning partner for us as exhibition architects. It’s all about scale. We paid a lot of attention to create strong visual vistas to direct the visitor through space. An exhibition as complex as this needs clear contextual and visual layering, which we provided by our exhibition design strategy.

On 13 October 2022, the exhibition was opened ceremoniously by Juliana’s daughter Princess Beatrix.

Graphic design by Studio Berry Slok

Production by Klief, Frits Ham, PPS, Watjeziet, team De Nieuwe Kerk

Photography by Mike Bink

Delivery 2022