Villa de Bank
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Villa De Bank is an art space in the Dutch city Enschede. It has been located in the former villa Blijdenstein since its foundation in 1998. The art space was created through a fusion of the foundations Stichting de Villa and Stichting de Bank, both founded in the 1980s.
The artist-run initiative is situated in a stately villa, in a small park east of the city centre. Surrounding the villa is the Blijdensteinpark with several statues, including a colonial monument by Hans Petri. The two sections of the Blijdensteinpark previously formed an estate of five and a half hectares around the country house.[1]
Exhibitions
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The exhibition policy mostly aims to show solo presentations of young artists, including graduates of the AKI academy of fine arts. Besides solo shows there are occasional themed exhibitions and international exchange projects, often in cooperation with Kunstverein ArtHAUS located in Ahaus, Germany. In 2018 Villa de Bank showed the work of Dutch artist Melle Nieling in a cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art in New York.[2][3]
Villa de Bank organizes about seven shows lasting a month and a half, every year. Accompanying these exhibitions a list of editions, books and catalogues have been published. To finance the activities, the artist initiative has a circle of donators, who receive an annual print folder and multiples as compensation.
Various prominent Dutch and international artists have exhibited at the art space, including: Gijs Assmann, Hans Ebeling Koning and Philip Akkerman.
