The most beautiful

Text by Anne van Driel

A simple sign. This, she decided, was all that she would take to AVRO's Kunstblik (1998) - a television program by the presenter Angela Groothuizen and museum director Liesbeth Brandt Corstius, in which the audience is allowed to state its preference concerning works brought in by artists. An art program where one can sign up for a favorite painting or tempting piece of sculpture. And where a number of chosen individuals (who drew lots after having providing the right answer to a quiz question) are to consider themselves lucky to have just won a costly object. There stood artist Birthe Leemeijer with her sign amid the enticing canvases. Among the paintings and sculptures, she offered a fragile promise: on her sign, in Dutch, stood the phrase "I'll show you the most beautiful thing I know."

To what place would she take you? What new thing would she show? And what would you yourself choose as the most beautiful thing you know?