Ramping Up to Rotterdam: A Sneak Peek at the Ship’s Art Collection

Did you tune in to Holland America Line Brand Ambassador Seth Wayne’s “Ramping Up to Rotterdam” update last week on our Facebook page? For the March edition, he spoke with Tal Danai from ArtLink, who is curating much of the ship’s art. Here are some photos of some of the pieces that will be displayed on board, plus some of Tal’s thoughts on the role of the ship’s art.

I think that the contribution that art brings to our lives becomes very obvious on board Holland America Line ships. What we do with the art on board follows a narrative, and with the three Pinnacle Class sisters this happens to be music from different angles. We try to make people not just look at elements that have something to do with music, but experience music in visual forms, in structural forms, be embedded in it. This is the role of the art the way we see it on board the Holland America Line ships.

The sourcing process never ends. The assignment comes, and as a team of curators, we are supposed to be ready with our paints and brushes to be able to create the picture. We have to know the artists and the art they make, and their abilities to make art for us based on previous works. We should be able to put a narrative together and tell it through the works of art that we are sourcing to create one huge canvas.

If I want to put everything in context, what we did in creating the narrative for Rotterdam, we went after four elements in the experience of music: One was the actual visual structure of sound. Next is sharing a moment, what happens to us when we listen to music with other people? That experience is shared, and how we experience it changes. The third was on time and place. How does the place that we listen to music become part of the memory? Last is star quality. What is the role of the actual performer?

Featured in the Atrium:
“Balloon Concerto” is by Federico Picci, a Florence-based artist who was trained as a pianist before he was trained as a visual artist. He is trying to capture exactly that moment of how music would look if we could not only listen to it, but see it. The balloons represent those fleeting moments of something that is being created but evaporates in the air, like the element of sound.

“Balloon Concerto” by Federico Picci.

Featured in the Club Orange Dining Room:
These works by Lisa Krannichfield play on our fourth element, star quality. What is the role of the actual performer when standing on stage, when performing the music? These pieces are exactly that side of when music is so strong it feels as if it being played by pieces of metal. It comes from that notion of creating music with hard instruments — and the idea of taking feminine images and turning on that boarder between masculine and feminine, and creating strong images. These are part of Club Orange, where style is the driving force. What does it mean to be fashionable, what does it mean to make a statement.

This work by Lisa Krannichfeld will be in Club Orange.

Featured in the Embarkation Area:
This work entitled “Billie Holiday” is by Ani Abakumova. It is made up of three miles of threads, 8,000 threads in total. Even if you stand up close, it looks like an image painted on a surface with wires threaded over nails. Ani’s husband is a mathematician, and he developed an algorithm that allows his wife to be able to use 8,000 threads per image and create the image from the threads that change color, there is no paint.

This piece by Ani Abakumova is made up of 8,000 pieces of thread.

Featured in the Explorer’s Lounge:
Artist Anna Marinenko plays on the idea of how sound makes vision and vision makes sound, and how you can take one and imagine the other. If you hide half of this picture after you have seen the whole thing you know how to complete the other — you know how to complete the soundwave, you know how to complete the visuals of the city, you can complete the picture yourself. The soundwaves come from actual sound taken in the city featured.

The skyline of New York, by Anna Marinenko.

The skyline of Oslo, by Anna Marinenko.

Without being too pretentious, what I would love our work to do its serve as an introduction, then as a source of reflection when a guest goes ashore and experiences a destination and then comes back on board. Before you leave the ship to go on land you experience another point of view that may be different from the one you expected. And if that adds just another layer of richness to what you experience on land, if we can reach that level of reflection while we are on a journey, then I’ll be the happiest.

— Tal Danai, ArtLink