Part of Exhibition Notes, a series on shows worth your time.
It is not every day that you see the word “manosphere” on a museum wall. Beyond the Manosphere: Masculinities Today, at the Stedelijk Museum until 2 August 2026, borrows its title from the online world of alpha males and dating coaches, then sets out to ask a much older question: what does it actually mean to be a man?
What Beyond the Manosphere is about
Curated by Melanie Bühler, the exhibition brings together 35 artists from several generations, with works from the 1960s to today. Rather than answering the manosphere on its own shouty terms, it treats masculinity as something constructed and performed: a role that can carry power and aggression, but also awkwardness, tenderness and doubt. The rooms are loosely organised around legacy, violence, desire and norms, and the names range from Sophie Calle and Tetsumi Kudo to Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, Eduardo Paolozzi, Lucy McKenzie and Sylvie Fleury.
The ideal man, according to 1978
My favourite work in the show is “De ideale man” (1978), in which Dutch photographer Hans Eijkelboom asked women to describe their ideal man. A make-up artist then transformed him to match each description, and he was photographed alongside the woman in question. The results are funny and a little melancholy at the same time: the same face, reshaped over and over by someone else’s expectations.
Beyond the Manosphere does not actually answer the question in its title, and I am not sure it means to. It gathers up images of masculinity, from the ridiculous to the touching, and lets you do the comparing. I walked out with more questions than I came in with, which, with this subject, might be the honest outcome.
The exhibition runs at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam until 2 August 2026, and travels to Kunstmuseum St. Gallen afterwards. If you are making a day of it on Museumplein, my guide to the Oud-Zuid museum quarter is a good companion.
Planning your visit? This might help:
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam: Entry Ticket
Lovers Canal Cruise + Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam: Entry Ticket
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