Walk into the hall and you immediately notice how tightly everything is laid out. The spatial arrangement was designed by Strijkers Studio, so you don't wander past individual display cases, but really move through Kho Liang Ie's work. The line of the exhibition is clear: from his earlier furniture to major interior design projects and exhibition designs.
The central point is that this is the first major retrospective in more than fifty years around Kho Liang Ie. Curator Ingeborg de Roode, along with Eng Bo Kho, pulls open his entire oeuvre: furniture, interiors, exhibition stands and graphically related work. As a result, you can see how consistent his handwriting is, whether it's a chair, a waiting room or an exhibition stand.
One of the strongest parts is the section around Schiphol Airport. You can see elements of the historic airport interior, including the seating system 720. These are those low, austere benches that once defined the image of the departure hall. In the exhibition, parts of them have been rebuilt so that you can experience the scale and rhythm of that space.
This exhibition shows well the extent of his influence on both public and domestic interiors in the period from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. From airports to living rooms, his sober, thoughtful way of designing pops up everywhere. Anyone with a thing for design from that era will recognize half a century of design in the Netherlands in one afternoon.
Location
Stedelijk Museum: modern art of name and fame
More than 100,000 works and an exhibition program that stops at nothing
Everyone knows Museum Square, but not everyone knows what is currently running at the Stedelijk. And that's a shame, because the 2026 exhibition program is perhaps the most varied in years. From a Chagall retrospective to contemporary sculpture, from design to photography. There is plenty to see. The biggest eye-catcher is the ...
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