Groninger Museumnacht 2022

The Museumnacht is, as you can expect, a night that is organized by different museums in Groningen. Of course the Groninger Museum is part of the collaboration, as this is probably the most known one among students and stadjers. With its location close to the central station and the city center and its extraordinary appearance, this museum is hard to miss. However, there are many more museums that are joining the Museumnacht: GRID Grafisch Museum, Museum aan de A, Noorderlicht, Storyworld, the Forum and the University museum Groningen. In case you’re not necessarily that into museums, you might be surprised that there are so many museums in this city.

In my experience, often a museum is not the first thing you think of when you want to plan a nice day out. However, if you give it a chance a whole new world might open for you. To make this a bit more concrete and convincing, let’s get rid of two assumptions first: the Museumnacht does not only entail looking at “boring paintings”. Instead, there are a lot of nice performances (in previous years by Eurovision Songfestival participant S10 for example) and workshops. Besides, the assumption that museums and thus this event is mostly for elderly people is also not true, as the average age of visitors is between 20 and 35 years. So, it’s actually a very interactive event for people like you!

So how does the event work? For only €10 you can get access to all 7 participating museums between 19:00 and 01:00. You can buy your tickets online (here) and exchange it for a wristband from the 7th of September onwards at any of the participating museums. It’s recommended to keep this wristband, because it gives you the opportunity to visit one of the museums for free one more time before the next Museumnacht. And you might want to use this, as it’s almost impossible to see everything in only 6 hours. Because there are so many things to do and to see at every museum, you either have to hurry slightly, or come back another time if you want to see everything.

It might be smart to have a look at all the programmes beforehand, so that you can already check out where you really want to go and what you might want to save for another time. In case you completely forget this, I will share some tips with you that seem interesting and nice to me. If you like music, I would definitely go to the Groninger Museum and listen to Batatuké and WadAap, a Brazilian band and a hip hop duo who make music that is slightly different from what you might be used to. In addition, you can join the silent disco with DJ Somoni and dance the night away. If you prefer to see others dance instead of doing it yourself, you should also visit GRID Grafisch Museum, where student dance team AtaXia (which I’m part of myself) will give a swinging performance consisting of dances from their 5th annual dance show ‘This was the News’. Not that into singing or dancing? Also no problem! Maybe the workshop Cyanotype from Noorderlicht in the Akerk, where you will learn a special technique that allows you to photograph without a camera, might be something for you. Don’t worry if it’s not, this is just an example. There are many other options so there’s definitely something you’ll like!

Regardless of your interests, the Museumnacht will show you that this city is so much more than just your student room and lecture halls. Besides Groningen's interesting history there are impressive exhibitions, fascinating workshops, good music and dance performances, so in case you want to discover your cultural self visiting the Groninger Museumnacht might be a very good idea!