Designing the Nation State
From 18 April to 20 September 2026, the Design Museum Den Bosch is presenting an exhibition titled ‘Designing the Nation State’, exploring the relationship between design and the nation state. The exhibition centres on the question of how the nation state, as a political and cultural order, is made visible and stabilised through design. It examines nationalism as a defining ideology of modernity and focuses on its visual and material dimensions.
A Design History of Nationalism
What is a state? Who has the right to define a state? And what design elements are used to make it visible and effective? The exhibition starts from the premise that national identity often seems self-evident in everyday life, conveyed through symbols, rituals and everyday objects such as flags, passports or banknotes.
Using these visual and material forms, the exhibition unfolds a comparative design history of the nation state. It reveals how strongly state authority is based on symbols, from the coat of arms and the national anthem to architecture and forms of representation.
At the same time, a paradoxical pattern emerges: the more strongly nations emphasise their own identity, the more frequently they resort to similar design codes. The visual language of nationalism is universally understood and is constantly being reproduced anew.
The exhibition is curated by Tomas van den Heuvel.
