On April 2, 2025, the 378th birthday of Maria Sibylla Merian, the Maria Sibylla Merian Bridge was festively unveiled in Amsterdam. The bridge connects the busy Middenweg with Park Frankendael, a leafy and rural area surrounding a seventeenth-century country estate.
The bridge was built in 2000 based on a design by the architectural firm Sant en Co of Edwin Santhagens and is only accessible to pedestrians and cyclists. Biologist Etje Hulzebos submitted a request to the municipality for naming the bridge, and this was honored by the mayor of Amsterdam. The Maria Sibylla Merian Society owes her a great debt of gratitude for this laudable initiative.
The newly installed nameplate was unveiled on the bridge on the sunny afternoon of April 2 by Merian specialist and initiator of our society Florence Pieters. This took place in the presence of many members and interested guests, listening to speeches and enjoying drinks.
The city of Amsterdam could not have found a more suitable location to pay tribute to Maria Sibylla Merian considering the connection between urban activity and the nature-abundant surroundings that invite to contemplation.
The film Metamorphosis by filmmaker, photographer, and media artist Pim Zwier can be seen in Dutch cinemas from March. The biopic offers a ‘unique film experience,’ as a Dutch newspaper described it. As the film tells Merian’s life by quoting textual sources, the film creates a historically sound and accurate image. Moreover, it also offers a stunning spectacle on a visual and artistic level. Scenes about Maria’s life are alternated with breathtaking close-ups of eating and pupating caterpillars. The camara pays ample attention to their activities, creating a hypnotic effect. The scenes informing about Merian’s life are also designed in a peculiar and innovative way: living actors perform their actions against a background of prints and illustrations from Merian’s time. This creates poetic and truthful tableaux vivants with enough room for nuance. Merian's life naturally offers ample opportunity for over-romanticization, but fortunately Pim Zwier does not fall into that trap. The Maria Sibylla Merian Society is very pleased with such an intelligent and beautifully designed tribute and hopes that the film will soon be shown in other countries.
https://pimzwier.com/metamorphosis-film/
Here are some more quotes from Dutch newspapers:
"The film is a 'mixture of ‘nature documentary, costume drama and art project’: the film is unparalleled."
"Yet the real main characters of the film are the caterpillars. Zwier gives them plenty of space: the beautiful, fat, quietly gnawing caterpillars are repeatedly prominently featured, with the plant they live on."
Gemma Venhuizen, NRC, March 18, 2025
"Sometimes it's a costume drama, with actors who seem to have stepped out of a painting and recite old Dutch texts. Sometimes it's a nature film, with minutes of footage of eating caterpillars, molting caterpillars, pupating caterpillars and just-awakened, slimy and still half-folded butterflies"
"Metamorphosis is made with so much love and precision - from the costumes to the improvised music by baroque orchestra Holland Baroque - that Zwier fully manages to convey his fascination. Even for an unsightly caterpillar that poops, eats and molts.
Pauline Kleijer, De Volkskrant, March 19, 2025
