Museum Beelden aan Zee hosts the exhibition Ryan Gander x Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux, which creates a dialogue between British artist Ryan Gander and French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas (1834–1917), on view until 4 January 2026. The show brings together Gander’s long-term exploration and reinterpretation of Degas’s well-known sculpture "Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans" (1880–1881), a project he has been developing since 2008.
Gander reimagines Degas’s bronze ballerina by removing her from the conventional museum pedestal and placing her in contemporary situations. The figure no longer appears as a static object on display but instead inhabits everyday or unexpected settings. Sometimes she’s seated, sometimes waiting, or absorbed in another activity. These new contexts shift how the figure is perceived, inviting a different kind of attention and reflection.
The exhibition presents all 22 sculptures from Gander’s ongoing series for the first time. It also includes Degas’s original "Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans," on loan from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, offering a direct encounter between Gander’s reinterpretations and Degas’s original.
Degas’s sculpture portrays a young ballerina standing in a controlled yet unforced pose. The figure reflects both the physical rigor demanded by dance training and the vulnerability of youth. Gander responds to this duality by relocating the figure into present-day contexts, raising questions about how art represents reality, how it idealizes, and how those ideals change over time.
Brigitte Bloksma, director of Museum Beelden aan Zee and curator of the exhibition, highlights the layered connection between Degas’s original and Gander’s responses. She notes how the show allows viewers to trace shifting approaches to themes such as movement, youth, waiting, and time.
Ryan Gander x Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux is Gander’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. It was made possible through the collaboration of several public and private collections that lent works from the series. Museum Beelden aan Zee also commissioned Gander to produce a new sculpture to complete the group. This new work, titled "Waiting for timefall, or Living in a time where everything is possible, but nothing can happen," is being shown here for the first time.
