Haringpakkers Tower rebuilt for Amsterdam Light Festival
This project still ranks as one of our proudest achievements. For the Amsterdam Light Festival, with the production help of Studio Louter, we recreated a long vanished tower in order to prove a point about landmarks. [...]
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Studio Todd van Hulzen is an Amsterdam based design studio specialized in showing off: creating museum exhibitions, visitor experiences, design presentations, exhibit furnishings, art objects and theatrical environments.

Exhibitions can be emotional experiences: when done right. Let us help you create a compelling visitor journey without losing sight of your institutional principles. We offer display solutions for all budgets, innovative concepts, […read further]

If you require an unusual film set you need a broadly experienced designer. Todd van Hulzen has 30 years of film experience. He’s built on his love of historic architecture to become the go-to guy for the design of period sets […read further]

works of art

Studio Todd van Hulzen is essentially an art studio. Besides practical design Todd van Hulzen is a fine artist, creating in a variety of media.  One-off artworks are available on commission, and soon a line of commercially available reproductions can  […read further]

Sculpting and Modelling in Lucca, Italy

Project: Feature film, unnamed Function: Art Director, Artist, Set Designer Location: Lucca, Tuscany In addition to designing sets and tending to their construction under the Production Designer, Wilbert van Dorp, Todd filled a couple of other artistic holes: sculptor, occasional scenic artist and 3d modeller.  Here are a few photogenic

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Recent Gallery Work: The Book of Lost Forests

The Book of Lost Forests: Black and White paintings made of charcoal ink on paper, drawn from coals collected from burnt out forests in Oregon (USA). It explores again human relationships to nature. Compositions feel historic and vaguely narrative, but are ultimately very abstract upon closer inspection. This apparent historicity is

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Recent Gallery Work: Tarnation

Tarnation: This series is an experiment in the meaning of materials. A kind of architecture is made from handmade waxes, tars and pigments. An almost ecclesiastical architecture arises out of bitumen and tar, wax and damar. Drawings made of charcoal ink, gum arabic, shellac, etc sketch a new direction for mixing

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Recent Gallery Work: Aviaries

Aviaries: Both Aviaries and the series Harpies are an expression of “natures revenge” and inescapable human hubris. There is an architecture made to contain nature, in a sense to bring us closer to nature, but it is exploded and degraded. The human and historical elements are too apparent to ever allow

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Recent Gallery Work: Harpies

Harpies (Vengeful Flock): This series is an elaboration on the paper cuts from the past. Largely it is an expressionist diversion away from the literalness and narrative qualities of the paper cuts which were either done on commission or following a literary theme, such as the cantos of Dante’s Inferno.

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Interactives for Land Art Museum Flevoland

The Dutch province of Flevoland, entirely reclaimed from the sea in the 1950s and 1960s, has great swathes of open space and relatively new “nature”.  As such there is a remarkable amount of so called Land Art in the province. Land Art is an artform analogous to sculpture that employs

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A Big Wax Model of Hoorn

photo Benno Ellerbroek Hoorn is an old city in the North of Holland on the shores of the former Zuyder Sea. In the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries it was wildly prosperous, and sent its merchants and soldiers the world over in search of glory and domination. Great profits,

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The Belfry Museum of Monnickendam

The regional museum “Waterlands Museum & Speeltoren” is a museum dedicated to the history of the region just north of Amsterdam, called Waterland. The main town of the region is charming Monnickendam, and the main landmark of Monnickendam is it’s ancient belltower, the “Speeltoren“. The tower houses the oldest carillon

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Model of Historic Chambers in Hoorn

For a new exhibition for the marvellous West Friesmuseum in the city of Hoorn we had the challenge of working in a beautiful period room from the middle of the 18th century. When working in a rich historic space it is necessary to take account of more layers of aesthetics,

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A quick bit of heritage modelling

https://www.vanhulzen.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/kanon_model-1.mp4 For the Mauritshuis in The Hague I was engaged on a project which included research and exhibitions about plundered art or “roofkunst”, meaning specifically the works of art and artifacts that were stolen from colonialized countries and other subjugated peoples during the Western push to dominate the world. The

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Small intimate paper-cuts

Commissions come in all shapes and sizes. Additionally, the emotional teneur can vary quite a lot. Recently I’ve made two small paper-cuts that have served as memorials to the recently deceased: One as a pall accessory —the pall being the cloth that lays on a coffin at a funeral service—

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Installation “Black Eden” at M. Museum

My immersive installation “Black Eden” is open in the pop-up annex of M. Museum, in Almere. Black Eden which alternatively could be called “Carbon Garden”, is about cognitive dissonance in a scorched paradise. It’s a comment on human self image and ecology. Museum M. is making its mark by orienting

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who is Tvh?

todd a van hulzen

designer

Todd van Hulzen (1967) comes from the state of Oregon in the U.S.A from a family of Dutch Reformed rancher-farmers. He studied history and art in Portland, Oregon (Lewis & Clark College.) After an initial stay in the Netherlands in 1989, and in Italy after that, he settled permanently in Amsterdam in 1999. He returns yearly to Klamath County, Oregon to work on his cabin.

After an early career as a fine artist and sculptor in the film world Todd moved on to be a designer of film sets, with as a specialty period architecture and design. As Art-Director/Set-Designer Todd designed film sets for the Oscar nominated films Girl with a Pearl Earring and Fantastic Mr. Fox. Recent Dutch productions are Bloed, zweet en tranen, Michiel de Ruyter en de western Brimstone. Since 2007 he has turned towards the museum world as an exhibition designer. Besides that he works on his own independent work.

At Todd van Hulzen Design it’s all about making unforgettable experiences and inspiring emotions such as admiration, amazement, and self recognition. We love to help people discover how awesome the world is.

The love of a museum for it’s collection is something we admire. We encourage clients to rediscover the beauty of their own missions. Yet, making an exhibition that is also an artistic sensation in itself is the designer’s valhalla. So let’s combine the two! 

Here’s a guide to a proper work strategy when making an exhibition:

  1. Immersion
    You begin designing a space by first immersing yourself in the content. Draw everything you can out of historic and scientific material. Draw connections and dare to make thematic leaps.
  2. Integration
    Make sure that you can unite as many exhibit elements as possible under one umbrella: graphics, multimedia, architecture, PR and story. Encourage as much cross-pollination as possible.
  3. Distillation
    Distill all the themes into one visual brand; if possible one that represents your narrative in a nutshell and one that visitors can have an emotional bond with.  Couple it to a slogan.
  4. Respect
    Value the building and its history and keep the unique mission of the institution in high regard. Don’t let an exhibition clash with its surroundings. Remember accessibility. 
  5. Visitor orientation
    Make sure the design answers basic questions of orientation:
    Where. Where am I? Where am I within the whole and what is my next step? (Give a clear structure)
    Why. Why am I here? What draws me onward. (Reward curiosity with amazement)
    What. What is the key question? (Make the raison-d’être of the exhibition apparent)
    How. How is my world view changing? (Effective means of communication)
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Contact

Please call or write for an appointment to see a presentation
+31 (0)626196137
todd@vanhulzen.com