In recent years, birds have increasingly appeared in contemporary art. Why do artists today so often return to the image of the bird? Is it a revival of our age-old fascination with their beauty, elegance, and symbolism? Or does it signal a deeper concern with our changing relationship to nature, and the alarming decline of bird populations worldwide?   Birds , the thirteenth exhibition at Het Kunstenhuis, is curated by artist Klaus Vescheure  as a meditation on the bird in a