Starting Friday, April 17, the Stedelijk Museum will hang full of works that ask one question: what does it mean to be a man today? Beyond the Manosphere: Masculinities Today runs through Aug. 2, 2026 and is curated by curator Melanie Bühler. The occasion is urgent enough: the manosphere is growing, Trumpism is setting the tone, and discussion of masculinity has become inevitable. The museum does not take an easy side but shows how layered all that is.
The exhibition combines work from the 1960s with contemporary and specially created pieces. Hans Eijkelboom is present with work from his series ‘The Ideal Man,’ created between 1977 and 1982, when questions about masculinity were no less urgent but sounded different. Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley delve into consumerism and psychoanalysis. Eduardo Paolozzi and Tetsumi Kudo represent the modernity of the 1960s. And then there is Reba Maybury, who created a new work based on Leo Gestel's 1910 ‘Reclining Nude’: in it, the balance of power is literally reversed.
The Stedelijk is the national museum of modern and contemporary art, located on Museumplein near the Vondelpark. A place that has dared to ask tough questions for decades. For this exhibition, it is filled with work that takes intimacy, queerness, labor, race, class and popular culture as entry points. Sven Gex sketches characters based on influencers and celebrities. Jasmine Gregory's new work from the ‘Investment Piece’ series deals with wealth as white and male privilege. And SoiL Thornton installed an inflatable object, the ‘Husband Chair,’ that literally blocks a passageway. Site-specific, and you get the metaphor immediately.
Thirty-five artists, multiple generations, one question with nowhere easy to answer.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication published by Bierke, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen and the Stedelijk, with contributions by Judith Butler and Hannah Black, among others. The audio tour is curated with perspectives by Simon(e) van Saarloos, Maurits de Bruijn, Lilian Stolk, Sjef van Beers and Margarita Osipian of The Hmm. After Amsterdam, the exhibition will travel on to Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland. Thirty-five artists, multiple generations, one question that is nowhere easy to answer.