Golf to a Japanese garden: 13 great things to do in October

It’s October and the cultural season is off to a good start. There are lots of restful established names in this month’s cultural offerings, with some modern challenges mixed in.

Experience Butoh
It’s the 10th edition of the Butoh Festival at the Teatro Munganga in Amsterdam this month. Fourteen dancers from Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Mexico, Taiwan and the UK will be performing their interpretation of the avant-garde “dance of darkness”, which originated in Japan after the devastation of the atomic bombs. October 2 and 3. Website

Get your skates on for some colf
It is touted as the earliest depiction of golf: Hendrick Avercamp’s Colf Players on the Ice dating from around 1625. Then as now, the players in the foreground look like well-to-do-gentlemen while in the back two others seem to be playing a game of ice hockey.

The Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis have just bought the painting for an eyewatering €11.4 million from a private owner in the United States. It will go on show in Avercamp’s home town of Kampen as part of the exhibition Averkamp back in Kampen: the 17th century through the eyes of Hendrick and Barent. (Barent,  Hendrick’s nephew, also specialised in winter landscapes) From October 3. Website

Believe it (or not)
In a time when scientific fact is regarded as just another opinion, the Teylers Museum in Haarlem is mounting Zeker Weten? (Are we sure?), an exhibition around the five tenets of scientific research: prove, repeat, modify,  check and build.

That is exactly what the scientists of yore did, for instance when sightings of black swans overturned the assumption that only white ones existed, and the discovery in 1938 of a coelacanth, which proved it was not extinct. Historical books, models and instruments illustrate the search for “exact” science. From October 2. Website

Meet Matisse at the H’ART
The H’ART Museum in Amsterdam has unselfishly offered to relieve the soon-to-be refurbished Centre Pompidou of its Matisse collection, along with other paintings by the likes of Mark Rothko, Pablo Picasso, and Barnett Newman that also needed a new temporary home.

Chez Matisse – Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou, comprises some 80 works, including La Blouse roumaine, which is hardly ever allowed off the Pompidou premises. The collection follows Matisse as he experimented with colour and shapes, culminating in his work at the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence. From October 3. Website

Catch a De Kooning
The Rijksmuseum blockbuster this autumn is a retrospective of Dutch abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) which puts his drawings centre stage. De Kooning left his native Rotterdam at age 24 and entered the United States as a stowaway. Willem de Kooning at work shows over 120 drawings, and some of his sculptures and paintings, mapping out De Kooning’s journey from house painter to important innovator of modern art. From October 6. Website

Get a taste of Japan in The Hague
The Japanese Garden at the Clingendael Estate in The Hague, which opens for a few weeks every year, is more popular than ever. Make sure you get your ticket for a slot to see its autumnal splendour. From October 10. Website

Cock a snoot at speculators
Plus ça change…Cherry Town is a jolly musical romp about housing shortage, corruption and the healing power of love, based on the operetta by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich written in 1959. Performed by the Dutch National Opera and supported by the Netherlands Philharmonic, the comical shenanigans of speculators and indignant tenants are a treat for young (from 10) and old. Sung in English. October 8-20. Website

Remember Marisol
The Boijmans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam has dusted off the largely forgotten work of Marisol (1930-2016), a Venezuelan artist whose playful wooden sculptures about serious subjects, such as women’s rights and the environment, became popular in the 1960s. The museum organised her first solo show and The Car became one of its most celebrated exhibits. From October 9. Website

Say hello to Whistler’s mum
Van Gogh liked and wrote about many of his contemporaries, including James Whistler, which spurred the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to organise the major retrospective Whistler, Dandy and Disruptor. The dandy bit refers to his dashing looks while his l’art pour l’art attitude upset the critics of the time.

His most famous painting Arrangement in Gray and Black, No. 1, better known, to his annoyance, as Whistler’s Mother, moved Van Gogh, who said it reminded him of his own mother. From October 16. Website

..and see his take on Amsterdam
At the same time as the main exhibition in Amsterdam, the Mesdag Collection in The Hague presents Whistler. Loving the Netherlands. The painter visited the Netherlands 10 times, resulting in etchings and atmospheric watercolours.

With dandyish good taste, he chastised his Dutch fellow artists: “You Dutch painters don’t know what you’re missing by neglecting your beautiful city of Amsterdam, which I find more beautiful than Venice.”  From October 16. Website

Explore some great design ideas
Dutch Design Week is ‘returning to RAW or Rebel Authentic Worth, unpolished and real”, so prepare to get basic. The Sausage Stool (Wuerstelhocker), a sausage-shaped perch on which to enjoy a wuerstel (and future sausage stool), is a case in point.

Eindhoven becomes the focal point of international creative ideas on serious subjects such as sustainability, new materials, technology,  education, play and much, much more. October 17-25. Website

Get to know Eve at the Vrijthof
The Fotomuseum aan het Vrijthof in Maastricht presents All About Eve, a retrospective of celebrated Magnum photographer Eve Arnold. The selection of 150 photographs focuses on her work from the 50s, 60s and 70s and includes images of famous filmstars and several series, including Malcolm X and Fashion Shows in Harlem. From October 19. Website

Get a buzz at the ADE
The 30th edition of the electronic music festival Amsterdam Dance Event is about to be unleashed on the capital, featuring, among many others, the Concertgebouw Orchestra playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony against the background of Einder, an artificial and ever-changing sky of floaty fabric covering the vast Centrale Markthal.

The ADE is also putting in a special appearance at the Van Gogh Museum (see above) on October 23, when electronic music band Devon Rexi and musician Coby Sey will respond electronically to Whistler’s work Nocturnes. October 21-25. Website