TextielMuseum: a museum where the machines are still running

A factory where weaving has resumed

The TextielMuseum is housed in a former textile factory on Goirkestraat in Tilburg, and in the old weaving mill textiles are once again made every day. This is where the TextielLab is based. Artists, designers, architects and students work here with the museum’s specialists to develop new textiles. They weave, knit, tuft, embroider and laser-cut, on computer-controlled machines and by hand. The museum calls itself a ‘working museum’, and it means it.

As a visitor, you simply walk into the workshop and look over the makers’ shoulders. What comes off the machines changes from day to day: a tapestry for an artist, a fabric for by TextielMuseum, the museum’s own label, or textiles for a building. The textile walls that Inside Outside designed for the LocHal, the former locomotive shed next to Tilburg station, were also made here. Each section of the lab has a QR code for the free audio tour in Dutch. You listen on your own phone, so bring earphones; the English translation can be read along on the museum’s website. Photography without flash or a tripod is allowed unless otherwise indicated, but out of respect for the makers’ copyright you may not photograph work in the lab in detail.

On show now

The TextielLab is 25 years old, and the museum is marking the occasion with Man <3 Machine – 25 Years of TextielLab (27 March to 10 October 2026): eleven works made in the lab, from monumental tapestries to sculptural 3D weaves, with video portraits of the weaving specialists and artists who worked on them. In 2002, Peter Struycken was the first artist invited to make a tapestry on the new computer-controlled loom, together with weaving specialist Stef Miero. The exhibition also includes work by Aiko Tezuka, Jan Taminiau, Bertjan Pot, Koen Taselaar and Mae Engelgeer, among others. The making process on a smaller scale is the subject of the Project Space with Marcos Kueh and Miranda Devita Kistler (2 October 2026 to 23 January 2027), where samples, materials, sketches and mood boards are shown alongside their new work. Kistler turned family photographs damaged by flooding at her grandmother’s house in Indonesia into knitted wall hangings, with loose threads standing for the water damage.

Red Threads – Old and New Stories in Art and Design (12 June 2026 to 22 May 2027) shows almost forty works from the museum’s own collection, spanning some two hundred years. In her Black Madonna, Alet Pilon dissects the Virgin Mary as the image of the tender mother, Susanne Khalil Yusef reflects on her first visit to Palestine with a tufted drone, and Sheila Hicks is represented by Snow White Sleeping from 1975. The exhibition was due to open on 15 March 2020, but the first coronavirus lockdown was announced the day before. Now it is getting a second chance. In Setting the Table Sustainably (23 May 2025 to 9 January 2027) you can follow how the design studio Envisions drew on historical ‘pellen’ damask from the collection to create a sustainable tablecloth for the museum’s label. And on the Panoramadeck, until 24 October 2026 and free of charge, Bindweefsel shows four artworks on which more than sixty women from Tilburg worked together for four years, in a project with the Contour de Twern foundation.

From AaBe blankets to union banners

Behind the exhibitions lies a collection of more than 26,000 objects. Part of it traces everyday textiles in the Netherlands from 1880 onwards: tea towels and tablecloths, AaBe blankets and fabrics from the De Ploeg weaving mill, but also Marcel Wanders’ Knotted Chair and Tejo Remy’s Rag Chair. The museum also collects textile art: work from the 1960s to the 1980s, as well as pieces by Jennifer Tee, Marian Bijlenga and Lam de Wolf. And it preserves the heritage of the Dutch textile industry itself: old looms, raw materials, strike leaflets and trade-union banners. Since the late 1990s the museum has commissioned artists and designers to make work for the collection, often produced in the TextielLab. Much of what it acquires each year also grows out of research and experiments in the lab.

If you want to read further, the library in the middle of the museum holds more than 20,000 books, making it the largest textile library in the Netherlands. It has its own opening hours: Tuesday to Thursday, and Fridays by appointment. The TextielShop sells the products of by TextielMuseum, the museum’s label for interior textiles, conceived by leading designers and made in the lab.

Before you go

The museum asks you to book an e-ticket on its website before your visit. In 2026 admission is €16.00 for adults and €6.00 for young people aged 13 to 17. Children up to and including 12 and holders of a Museumkaart, Rembrandtkaart or ICOM card go free; with a CJP card you pay €4.00. You can also buy a Museumkaart at the ticket desk.

From Tilburg station it is about a twenty-minute walk; leave the station on the north side. You can also take bus 5 towards Noord-Stokhasselt to the TextielMuseum stop. If you come by car, park in the public car parks on Pastoor Le Blancstraat or off Bisschop Bekkerslaan. From Monday to Saturday, parking there costs €1 an hour between 9 am and 10 pm. The museum is in a low-emission zone.

Sources

This text is based on the TextielMuseum’s website, consulted in October 2026. Opening hours, prices and exhibitions may change; please check textielmuseum.nl before your visit.