Museum on the Danube

I visited another wonderful art museum today, unusual in several ways. It is located south of Bratislava, just over the Hungarian border, on a peninsula in the Danube River, which was diverted several decades ago to reduce flooding and improve boating. Known as Danubiana, the Meulensteen Art Museum was built by a Dutch art patron Gerard H. Meulensteen, working with a Slovak gallery owner Dr. Vincent Polakovi.

The museum, new in 2000, is shown here surrounded by the River, with outdoor sculptures on permanent display by Hans Van de Bovenkamp. He is an American of Dutch origins. I noticed on all the signage that he capitalizes the "V," as I do in my name, a common "Americanization" of a Dutch name.

One of my favorite sculptures:

Here is another I particularly liked:

The exhibits focussed on people yearning to be free: a touring exhibit of South African Art and a retrospective of the work of Vladimír Kompánek, a prolific Slovak painter and sculptor who pressed the limits of artistic censorship before the fall of Communism.

Cameras were allowed in the galleries, but my amateur shots do not do justice to the material. Here is the Museum’s web site with better presentations: http://www.danubiana.sk/eng/index.html

The main disadvantage of the Museum is that it is not readily accessible by public transportation. I was able to visit courtesy of my department head on a warm late summer day.

NOTE: Click on any image in this blog to see it full-size.