During the 18th and 19th centuries, a trend emerged among upper class estate owners to build so-called follies that could be discovered by visitors and functioned as tea houses and conversation pieces. A popular theme was that of the “ruinous” hermitage or grotto that would be purpose-built to house a “hermit.”
Park Frankendael, the site of Amsterdam's last remaining 17th century country estate, still has one such a hermitage on an island in its grounds. Now inaccessible, this structure once housed a life size wooden automaton in a monk’s robe, carrying a skull and pointing at a coffin reading Gedenk te Sterven (Memento Mori). The figure has since long been removed and is currently kept at the Amsterdam Museum.
Coinciding with the Nacht van de Nacht and Halloween during the fall of 2021 October artist Billy Mullaney assumed the mantle of Frankendael's long-absent garden hermit. In his durational performance Welcome, I Have Been Expecting You, he took up residence in the park’s hermitage for fifty hours, giving a marathon series of one-on-one tarot card reading sessions around the clock to passers-by and visitors.
A tarot reader for 15 years, Billy Mullaney has conducted academic research into the dramaturgical structure of tarot performance, and has performed extensively in Amsterdam.