EXHIBITIONS OF A LIFETIME
O
N BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES TOWARDS EXHIBITIONS IN THE CONTEMPORARYD
UTCHMUSEUM WORLD
Author: Mariska de Bone
Student Number: 10151982
Supervisor: Dr Mirjam Hoijtink Second Reader: Dr Tamara van Kessel Second Version: 28 November 2017
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Foreword
“THE STRONGEST OF ALL WARRIORS ARE THESE TWO:TIME AND PATIENCE.”
- LEO TOLSTOY –WAR AND PEACE (1869)
‘Biographical exhibitions’ is not a fixed term as such, which becomes evident from doing a quick Google search. Nevertheless, I feel fortunate to have had the privilege of interning at an institution that started using this term extensively in their promotions. At Stichting De Nieuwe Kerk & Hermitage Amsterdam I fulfilled an eight-month internship from February 2016 until October 2016 at the exhibition department. My main task was doing research for the biographical exhibition about Marilyn Monroe called 90 jaar Marilyn: Omzien naar een iconische vrouw (90 Years Ms Monroe, Reflecting on a Female Icon). While working on the Marilyn exhibition, I realised that a biographical exhibition differs from an exhibition focussing on a certain art movement or a period in history. Not only does the narrative focus mainly on one person and their personal life, the exhibited objects and the visitor demographics differ from other exhibitions too. The popularity of these kind of exhibitions, as was already successfully demonstrated by the Groninger Museum with its David Bowie exhibition in 2014 – 2015, sparked my interest, and I have been fascinated by these kind of approaches towards exhibition making ever since. During my internship I spent a lot of time discussing this theme with various colleagues of the Hermitage & De Nieuwe Kerk. They helped me shape my ideas and supported me along the way, and I wish to thank each and every one of them for all their support and help.
Studying history evidently means living in a bubble of the past every now and then, but for this master’s thesis I have gone as contemporary as it gets. This was difficult at times, because with my history background I am used to, and comfortable with, endless theories, historical approaches and old sources. For this thesis, however, I had to create my own primary sources. From the start of this process it became clear that if I wanted to study whether these kind of exhibitions could be tendencies in Dutch museums, I needed to talk to museum professionals. Therefore, I interviewed seven experts in the field of Dutch museums, and I can say with certainty that it is a great addition to my thesis. Therefore, I wish to thank Tim Streefkerk (Airborne Museum Oosterbeek), Daphne Riabokon (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), Birgit Boelens (Stichting De Nieuwe Kerk & Hermitage Amsterdam), Andreas Blühm (Groninger Museum), Willemijn de Vries & Sandra Koch (Blockbuster Fonds) and Karlien Dijkstra (Paleis het Loo) for their time, the inspiration they or their exhibitions gave me and their openness regarding this, for most of them non-existing, subject.
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Moreover, I am very grateful that Dr Mirjam Hoijtink enthusiastically supervised my thesis. Her great advises and endless drive always motivated me to continue the, sometimes tedious, writing process of my thesis. Furthermore, I am thankful that Dr Tamara van Kessel agreed to be my second supervisor. Her comments, especially in the beginning of the writing process, helped me to establish my theoretical framework.
I highly doubt I would have ever finished this thesis if it was not for the help of my mother Wilma. Whether it was reading endless chapters or finishing an interview-transcript after I fell asleep on my laptop for the third time in a row, she always helped me out and supported me whenever needed. Lastly, I wish to thank my family and my friends for keeping me social, sane and, when needed, pushing me to keep on working.
Mariska de Bone August 2017
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Contents
Foreword
...2
Introduction
...5
1.
It’s My Life |
Individualism in biographical exhibitions ...
131.1. How does a visitor extract meaning from exhibitions? ... 14
1.1.1. Learning in museums ... 14
1.2. What aspect does add a ‘personal touch’ to this meaning? ... 16
1.2.1. Identification ... 16
1.2.2 Emotions and empathy ... 19
1.3. The popularity of biographical approaches in culture ... 22
1.3.1. The Biographical Method ... 22
1.3.2. The Biography – Biographical narratives in literature and film ... 23
1.3.3. What makes someone suitable for a biographical exhibition? ... 25
1.3.4. Fandom as Modern Hero Cult ... 27
2.
Writings on the Wall
|
Authorship and the biographical exhibition
30
2.1. The visitor and authorship: what the museum teaches us ... 31
2.2. The (biographical) subject and authorship ... 33
2.3. Authorship and authenticity in biographical objects ... 37
3.
Sign of the Times |
Biographical exhibition in the modern museum world44
3.1. The ‘New’ Museum: New Museology and Modernity ... 453.1.1. Modernity, liquid modernity ... 45
3.1.2. Museology: new approaches towards the designing of exhibitions etc. ... 47
3.2. The blockbuster biographical exhibition ... 50
3.2.1. What makes the biographical exhibition a good block buster? ... 50
3.3. The Dutch museum world and the market ... 53
3.3.1. Political changes from WOII until now ... 53
3.3.2. Neoliberalism in the Dutch museum world ... 56
Conclusion
...62
5
Introduction
The discursive museum and the notion of new museology have shaped the current field of the museum world.1 One of the most recent trends in the field are temporary exhibitions that focus on the life of a, most often famous, individual and their achievements in, for instance, politics or popular culture. These biographical exhibitions, as De Nieuwe Kerk calls them in their May 2016 press statement, have become extremely popular over the past five years in both the international and the Dutch museum world.2 For example, in the past two years exhibitions about popular musicians such as David Bowie and Amy Winehouse were held,3 as
well as exhibitions based on historical figures and their personal life stories such as the Catherine, the Greatest exhibition at Hermitage Amsterdam (18 June 2016 – 15 January 2017), Martin Scorsese, the Exhibition at The Eye Amsterdam (25 May – 3 September 2017) and current exhibitions about Maarten Luther at Museum Catharijneconvent (22 September 2017 - 28 January 2018) or Mata Hari at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden (14 October 2017 - 2 April 2018). Perhaps not coincidentally, some of these exhibitions in the Netherlands have been a huge success and eventually became ‘blockbusters’.4 Blockbuster exhibitions are, according to Andreas Huyssen, an important moment in the globalisation of museums since the 1970s.5 Apart from educating the visitor, these new exhibitions focus on the entertainment factor of museums as well. Nowadays, with the addition of a big national, or even international, mass media campaign, these exhibitions turn into vast exhibitions with many visitors in which the role of the marketing department seems to be indispensable. The popularity of creativity and culture is further elaborated on by Richard Florida, head of the
1 At least, according to Sharon Macdonald in A Companion to Museum Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011): 5-8.
For further information on the new museology and/or the discursive museum see Peter Vergo, The New
Museology (London: Reaktion Books, 1989).
2 De Nieuwe Kerk, Press Release, 26-05-2016. International biographical exhibitions that have been on show
include for example Mademoiselle Privé (2015) about CoCo Chanel at the Saatchi Gallery, London, the exhibition Kurt about Kurt Cobain at the Seattle Art Gallery (2010) and the exhibition about Elizabeth I at the National Portrait Gallery London (2014). More contemporary exhibitions are, for example, about the friendship between Michelangelo & Sebastiano at the National Gallery London (15 March – 17 June 2017) and about Princess Diana of Wales in the Kensington Palace London (2017 – 2018) which has been sold out since its opening on February 24th of 2017.
3 David Bowie IS.. was on show in the Groninger Museum from 11 December 2015 – 10 April 2016 and Amy
Winehouse:A Family Portrait was shown in the Jewish Historical Museum from 29 February 2016 to 4
September 2016.
4 In 2016, for instance, the V&A Exhibition about David Bowie attracted 201.301 visitors to the Groninger
Museum (Website Groninger Museum, 2016). The overview of Jheronimus Bosch called ‘Visioenen van een genie’ at the Noordbrabants Museum welcomed 421.700 visitors over the course of four months (Website Noordbrabants Museum, 2016).
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Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, in his best-selling book The Rise of the Creative Class (2002). Florida states that in the creative class functions, such as a socio-economic class, the members are people whose job is to create meaningful new forms, new ideas, technology or creative content.6 As a result, in the
United States of America, around 40 million American workers identify themselves with this creative class. Evidently, creativity has been considered a more and more validated concept in today’s society, Florida explains. Therefore, a more open environment has been created, in which support for arts and culture is clearly visible.7 Lastly, the Creative Class is of significant importance to the notion of leisure, in which the lines between work and non-work (leisure time, recreational time) become blurred and sometimes indistinguishable.8
When looking at the previous examples of biographical exhibitions as blockbusters, one could say that exhibitions on individuals, focussing on their lives through objects and narratives, are exhibitions that attract both the curious visitor as well as the museum professional.9 In order to gain insight in the rise and persistence of these (relatively new) exhibitions, and especially their popularity, various discourses need to be taken into consideration. For this research, I focus on ideas about authorship, individualism and modernity. These ideas influence the cultural society as such and are of interest when it comes to researching the current popularity of individuals and how these individuals give notion of their individualism in contemporary exhibitions. Therefore, my research question is: How do
the notions of authorship, individualism and modernity affect the biographical exhibition in the current Dutch museum world?
With regard to authorship, I reflect upon how it might have been what post-structuralist theorist Michel Foucault describes as ‘a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes and chooses’.10 This seems to have influenced the museum world as well.
However, the concept of authorship remains problematic: who is ‘the author’: the visitor or the museum professional? Who gives meaning to an exhibition? Both Foucault and Roland Barthes (in his much-cited essay Death of the Author from 1968) reject the idea that the author controls the meaning of the text and both state that the text features as some sort of
6 Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002): 8.
7 Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited (New York: Basic Books, 212): 76. 8 Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: 134.
9 It should be noted that biographical exhibitions, as I will use in my research, differ from the notion of
‘monographic’ exhibitions. Monographic exhibitions, in the traditional sense, illustrate the career of an artist by the means of his or her artworks. These retrospectives originate since the late nineteenth century, where they functioned as a commemoration for deceased artists or served the nation state in its formation. Biographical exhibitions have a strong focus on the narrative of the individual, and the objects do not have to be artworks.
10 Michel Foucault, “What is an Author” in Language, Conter-Memory, Practice (New York: Cornell University
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product. The author is merely a producer, leaving it to the reader, or, in this case, the visitor of a museum, to define the meaning. Current biographical exhibitions show authorship in the subject of the exhibition; the individual is its central theme and often his or her views on life become an important line of thought. For the new museology, this means a new role for the curator and also for the choice of the guest curator. The situation that artists are considered authors of artworks and curators authors of exhibitions, make the theory as suggested by Barthes and Foucault rather complicated. Could the subjects of biographical exhibitions be considered authors as well? Or are they merely the producers of the story?
Secondly, in order to research the popularity of these exhibitions it is necessary to research the influence of individualism and the role of the individual in society. But, what is at stake when we speak of individualism in the museum world? And for what reasons are visitors attracted to individualistic exhibitions? Inevitably this leads to questions and reflections upon current society. Compared to other approaches this is a neglected field of study, so it is important to know more about the expectations that visitors have before entering an exhibition. Something that certainly seems important, though, is the capacity to trigger an emotional connection with the topic.11 What this emotional connection includes has, of
course, to do with the individual notion of the self. However, Andrew Pekariks states that there is a resonance between what the objects in the museum are and what the individual brings to an encounter as a human being.12 In other words, the museum connects the artwork to the individual. Visitor research can be linked closely to how biographical objects and the story of the exhibition influences the experience of a museum visitor. In the contemporary museum world, the visitor is more present than before, and not just solely in number. The notion of modernity, as will be elaborated on later in this thesis, has a significant role in this.
What needs to be emphasised is that the individual person, central in these kind of biographical exhibitions, might be even more central than the objects the exhibitions feature, if they even feature objects at all. And although the biographical exhibition has gained most of its popularity in the last decade, the idea of a narrative focussing on one individual and his or her life is not new within the cultural field. One of the most notable examples can be found in the field of history. Take, for instance, the historical discourse around oral history and life writing. Oral history refers to the process of conducting interviews in order to gain insights in personal experiences of an historical event. The amount of historical research that focuses on
11 Jeffrey Smith, The museum effect: how museums, libraries, and cultural institutions educate and civilize
society (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014): 30. Andrew Pekarik’s research group at the Smithsonian
Institutions has been researching various motivations for visitors to go to the museum.
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biographical or primary sources has grown rapidly since the 1980s. According to Richard Cándida Smith this is a result of the concept of linguistic turn. Texts were deconstructed in order to find the underlying messages and the different layers of power. This triggered historians to use stories more and more, both written in the form of egodocuments, and through interviews.13 According to John Tosh, author of The Pursuit of History, oral history was greatly promoted by the history workshop movement and other left-wing initiatives to promote a more ‘democratic’ history, meaning that they do not solely focus on elite history of important men who have left written sources, but try to emancipate history. Furthermore, Lynn Abrams, historian at the University of Glasgow, writes in her handbook Oral History Theory that the use of oral history in the form of personal testimonies help historians in finding deeper and richer understandings of how the past is remembered, reworked, and reconstructed by the experiences of people in the present time.14 Biographical exhibitions attempt to create a vision of their biographical subject through the presentation of images, personal items, diaries and other kind of material documentation. The reconstruction of the lives of these people creates a certain vision of this person’s life and his or her values. As Susan Pearce further elaborates, it adds extra cultural beliefs and values through an investigation of their personal objects as some sort of religious relic.15
Important is the distinction between a biographical exhibition and, as previously mentioned, a monographic exhibition or house museums. There is no solid definition of house museum, however, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) does have an international committee called DEMHIST which focuses on the conservation and management of house museums. On their website, and in their statutes, DEMHIST describes house museums extremely broadly, by stating that they ‘range from castles to cottages, from all periods. The interpretation of house museums includes architectural, cultural, artistic and social information’.16 However, in a categorisation project dating from 2007, a model was created
for categorising the different house museums. For this research, the category of so-called personality houses is useful. On the one hand, these houses, dedicated to lives of notable figures in politics, literature, music or film, generally bring the domestic domain of private life into the public sphere of attention. On the other hand, house museums, and these personality houses in particular, serve as a way of channeling the narrative of a nation and
13 Robert Smith-Cándida (2006), ’Publishing Oral History: Oral Exchange and Print Culture,’ in The Research
Handbook for Oral History, eds. Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E. Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless (Walnut Creek:
AltaMira Press, 2006): 411.
14 Lynn Adams, Oral history theory (London: Routledge, 2016): 8.
15 Susan Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections: A Cultural Study (London: Leicester University, 1992): 201. 16 Website DEMHIST: http://demhist.icom.museum/shop/shop.php?detail=1255432597 (retrieved on 1 April
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serve the national culture of a country. In this case, however, these exhibitions on individuals are aiming towards a collective output from visitors.
With regard to the notion of modernity, the fluidness of the concept is something to bear in mind when researching the exhibitions. Modern society, according to Zygmunt Bauman, is subject to an inclination to constant change. Modernity is only a momentary settlement and there is no ‘final state’, which is also neither in sight nor desired.17 How does our modern
society and theories on late-modernity influence museums and their policy? One aspect of the current cultural world that should be mentioned is the privatisation of the museum, although it will not be featured in detail in this research. The museum is no longer, as a standard, solely funded by the state, for instance, by the province or municipal authorities, but there is an upcoming reliance on the museum’s own income through ticket sales, merchandise and sponsorships. Sponsorships in the form of funders, which are often large multinationals, are often unstable. For instance, when the funder is in financial trouble, it is likely to affect the amount of financial support for the museum as well. Moreover, all of a sudden, museums had to be aware of their market value: they needed to prove to stakeholders why they were worth their money.18 The economic value of a museum is no longer measured through ticket sales
alone; other factors such as the museum shop, a café, nearby shops and so on are of increasingly important as well. Blockbusters in the form of biographical exhibitions could therefore be a boost for this income, and furthermore, establish the image of the museum among the public, making the museum more appealing for potential sponsors. This is a result of the, as critics tend to call it, ‘neoliberal society’ in which financial interference of the state as such is limited and the individual can flourish. Cultural institutions such as museums have the task to keep the visitor interested by programming exhibitions that will attract a broad audience and by putting much effort in big marketing campaigns. I explore in what ways these biographical exhibitions are an expression of modernity, as conceptualised by scholars such as Bauman, and to what extent individualism and the death of the author is are of importance when it comes to biographical exhibitions and a museum’s policy around programming them.
By studying a series of case studies, I will examine the different biographical exhibitions that have been on show in the Netherlands in the past five years. How are they affected by the different discourses? Among them are the previously mentioned blockbuster exhibitions that focus on celebrities. Perhaps the most notable of them is the 2015/2016 exhibition about
17 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000): 82.
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David Bowie at the Groninger Museum. The exhibition was called David Bowie is, and it was curated by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2013 by curators Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh. This exhibition has been on a worldwide tour ever since. In the catalogue, Broackes and Marsh describe David Bowie is as a ‘stimulating multimedia experience’, with much emphasis on the artistic influences of Bowie and his music and films.19 The objects, more than 300 in total, originated from Bowie’s personal archives. This
makes the exhibition rather personal, although the setting is done in a way that suits the notion of new museology very well by mainly relying upon audience experience and describing it as – quoting Broackes – a ‘celebration of Bowie’s creativity’.20
Another celebrity exhibition I will analyse is the 2016/2017 Marilyn Monroe exhibition at De Nieuwe Kerk called 90 jaar Marilyn: Omzien naar een iconische vrouw (90 years Ms Monroe: Reflecting on a Female Icon).21 The exhibition contains more than 140 objects supporting the narrative that focuses entirely on Monroe’s life and her legacy (figure 1). All objects on display belong to various Marilyn-collectors, with German collector Ted Stampfer as the main contributing collector. The narrative follows Marilyn’s life through both the ups and downs: her image as a ‘sex-symbol’, her troubled childhood, her acting career and her struggle with depression and the enormous attention she attained by the media. De Nieuwe Kerk is the only venue out of the five case studies where the terminology biographical exhibition is used. In their Kunstenplan 2017 – 2020 the institution elaborates further on their upcoming exhibitions, which will all have a strong focus on the biographical aspect. For instance, the Nieuwe Kerk is currently programming the life stories of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King for the winter 2017 exhibition and the curators are planning to exhibit the life of Buddha in 2018. In their plan for the coming years, they emphasise the recognisability of life stories for the visitor and, consequently, how these stories are an important source for inspiration and ambition.22
One Dutch institution that is experienced in hosting biographical exhibitions, although they do not explicitly call them this, about different royal families is Paleis het Loo in Apeldoorn. This palace is a former residence of the House of Orange-Nassau, and was inhabited by Dutch royals from the seventeenth century until the death of Queen Wilhelmina in 1962. It has been a state museum since 1984, which is open for the public to show original furniture, objects and paintings of the Dutch royal family. Furthermore, Paleis het Loo hosts temporary exhibits
19 Victoria Broackes & Geoffrey Mash, David Bowie IS: Catalogue (Amsterdam: Xander Uitgevers, 2016): 19. 20 Victoria Broackes & Geoffrey Mash, David Bowie IS: Catalogue (Amsterdam: Xander Uitgevers, 2016): 19. 21 The exhibition was on show from 2 October 2016 to 5 February 2017.
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with a strong emphasis on royal history and traditions. In the previous years, many of these exhibitions had a strong focus on one royalty. For instance, in 2014 the museum collaborated with the Grimaldi Forum Monaco to host a large exhibition on the life and fashion collection of Grace Kelly.23 After the success of this exhibition, Paleis het Loo hosted three other
biographical exhibitions. First, they held a large exhibition on empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898), better known as ‘Sisi’, called Sisi, Sprookje & Werkelijkheid (Sisi, Fairy Tale & Actuality) in 2015, which was a collaboration with the highly popular ‘Sisi Museum’ in the Habsburg Palace in Vienna (figure 2). Second, Paleis het Loo organised an overview of German emperor Wilhelm II (1859-1941) called Der Kaiser! in the winter of 2015 – 2016, and, third, in late 2016 they hosted an exhibition on the monarch Anna Pavlova (1795-1865), who as a Romanov from Russia married into the Dutch royal family.
The popularity of oral history also results in exhibitions filled with personal narratives. An example is currently on show at the Airborne Museum in Oosterbeek. The exhibition, called EGO. Remember me, distinguishes the story of the Second World War Battle of Arnhem from a regular war narrative by focusing on the human individuals and their relation to the battle. The exhibition consists of 46 personal stories of Dutch, English, Polish and German civilians and soldiers, accompanied by personal objects such as letters by Polish and American pilots, military honour medals such as the Victoria Cross but also a doll from a little Dutch girl who lived in the battle area (figure 3). The Airborne Museum describes the relevance of EGO as being a result of a growing interest of the Dutch citizen in the Second World War. Moreover, the exhibition coordinator argues that there is a certain urgency to highlight these personal stories of first-hand witnesses, since their generation ‘is about to disappear for good’.24
The last case study focuses on the 2013 exhibition Art Is Therapy in the Rijksmuseum, in which philosophers Alain de Botton and Louis Armstrong worked as guest curators of the exhibition; not by choosing objects per se, but through personal interventions in the narrative of the museum itself. They attempted to do this by raising the question what the goal of art itself is and how it personally affects the museum visitor in his or her own life. De Botton and Armstrong describe their method as therapeutic: making visitors think about memories by attaching Post-Its to artworks from the Rijksmuseum’s collection.25 The exhibition furthermore teaches the visitor something about how to view museums, apart from the art
23 This exhibition, called Grace Kelly, prinses en stijlicoon eventually was extended with a few months and was
on display from 3 June 2014 until 4 January 2015.
24 Cited from Website Airborne Museum ‘Tentoonstelling EGO: vergeet mij niet’:
http://www.airbornemuseum.nl/nu-te-zien/tentoonstelling-ego-vergeet-mij-niet (retrieved on 27 March 2017).
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collections, by asking philosophical questions and placing remarks in unusual places such as the giftshop and at the roof of the Rijksmuseum (figure 4).
In my first chapter, I will research the notion of authorship. This will allow me to approach the theories of Foucault and Barthes and apply them to the notion of biographical exhibitions. I examine to what extent the subject of the exhibition features as an author in these exhibitions. How are the theories of Foucault and Barthes presented in the exhibition’s narrative and how are biographical objects related to this notion as well? In the second chapter, I will reflect upon individualism at biographical exhibitions. How a visitor extracts the meaning from an exhibition can be closely linked to both the notions of authorship and individualism. This connects the two chapters. Moreover, the central individual in these exhibitions is also an interesting matter to analyse. Why is it that certain (famous) individuals are suitable for these kind of exhibitions? This can, subsequently, be linked to the third chapter: modernity. The modern society has influenced both the museum professional and the museum visitor. Biographical approaches towards cultural outputs such as literature, film and museums are still gaining popularity and are therefore attractive for professionals in order to attract more visitors and to obtain more publicity.
Because of the contemporary nature of my subject, the methodological approach of my thesis will be based on an analysis of the theoretical framework.The used concepts of authorship, individualism, and modernity will be based on the broad, mainly philosophical and sociological, research. To analyse how these concepts affect museology, mainly in the Netherlands, I interviewed museum professionals that are or have been working on biographical exhibitions, both in the exhibition and the marketing department. Moreover, I have spoken to other specialists in the Dutch cultural field, such as professionals in the cultural funding section (Blockbuster Fund) and studied the works of museum specialists from the academic world, in order to gain insights in their opinion on these exhibitions. I hope that the outcome of the case studies shall give me some answers to these questions and if comparing the case studies can be meaningful. Although each case study is different, their similarities and differences make them rather interesting to analyse, as well as the entire aspect of personal approaches in current exhibitions in the Dutch museum world. Furthermore, the exhibition teaches the visitor something about how to view museums, apart from the art collections, by asking philosophical questions and placing remarks in unusual places such as in the gift shop and on the roof of the Rijksmuseum.
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Chapter 1
It’s My Life
Individualism in biographical exhibitions
Individualism and museums tend to be a large paradox. On the one hand, museums are eminently a place for collectivity and are, at least for some people, a social outing. Nevertheless, this chapter focuses on the individualistic approaches towards biographical exhibitions. Every visitor has his or her own experience when visiting a museum; opinions, thoughts and feelings occur in an individual manner. On the other hand, individualism in biographical exhibitions refers to the notion of a narrative focused on a one-person-subject, highlighting the life of someone with accompanying personal objects such as clothing, photographs and written texts.
In the West, individualism has been contingent and paradoxical. The centring of the imagery of individuality upon the topography of modern social discourse that took place over an extended period of time was halting in the elaboration of the boundaries between the individual and the collective institutions. Representations of individual figures, such as in the prominence of autobiographical narratives, can be seen as indications of the reorganization of experience around individual life. 26
The modern notion of individualism is complex and historical, according to climate policy lawyer Thomas Heller and professor of German Studies at the University of Chicago David Wellbery. In the introduction to their interdisciplinary work on individualism in society, they approach the complexity by explaining theoretical developments that may occur when speaking of this modern individualism. Developments in, for example, politics, economics, psychoanalysis or cultural anthropology increasingly rely on models and methods incompatible with the fundamental terms of individualism.
As a result, the individual became an autonomous aspect within society. However, at the same time, classical individualism is transformed into a mass artefact institutionally produced and reproduced. Sociologist and emeritus professor at Stanford University John Meyer insists that, although liberal individualism began as a representation of the private or autonomous realm of the subject, this realm was gradually depleted as the liberal social order
26 Heller and Wellbery, ‘Introduction’ in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in
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advanced.27 In other words, individualism is intrinsically connected with the notion of modernity and it has a certain influence on how the individual sees the world around him or her as well. Furthermore, Richard Florida marks individuality as one of the three key values for the Creative Class. ‘Members of the Creative Class exhibit a strong preference for individuality and self-expression. (..) The increasing nonconformity with organizational norms may represent a paradoxically new mainstream value’.28 In other words, members of
the Creative Class are keen on creating their own individualistic identities that reflect their creativity.
This notion has been of influence when perceiving individualism in museums. In this chapter, a reflection upon the contemporary notion of individualism and its influence on museums, specifically the personal aspect within biographical exhibitions, will be discussed. First of all, it is worth to analyse how, and to what extent, a visitor extracts meaning from exhibitions. Looking at the visitors and researching them is an indispensable part of the study on museums, although it has been overlooked in past academic research.
1.1. How does a visitor extract meaning from exhibitions?
1.1.1 Learning in museums
Studying the visitor creates a pattern in which, first of all, the individual is the actor when observing but, at the same time, becomes the artefact when being observed. Individuality derives from the politics of interactive inclusions and exclusions. It is constituted within an ongoing process of differentiation in which we, in taking positions, clothe ourselves in personal attributes historically associated with diverse locales. As a result, individuality is the outcome of collective controversy.29
Museum educator and former director of the highly regarded Bank Street College museum leadership program in New York, USA Leslie Bedford writes in The Art of Museum
Exhibitions that understanding the experiences of a visitor cannot solely be achieved through
teaching them something.30 Bedford argues that the general assumption of museums is that
they transmit knowledge, or simply educate. However, Bedford states that these exhibitions are, most probably, not the most effective. Exhibitions in which an aesthetic experience is
27 Heller and Wellbery, 9.
28 Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited: 56.
29 Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization: institutionalized individualism and its social and
political consequences (London: Thousand Oaks, 2002), XIV.
30 Lesie Bedford, The Art of Museum Exhibitions: How Story and Imagination Create Aesthetic Experiences
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created not only touch upon valid goals of a museum such as wonder and resonance, but, Bedford states, it eventually adds more depth to the learning process of the visitor.31
Alternatively, museum curator and writer of many publications on museum education and the history and philosophy of museums Lisa Roberts addresses in From Knowledge to Narrative:
Educators and the Changing Museum the notion that museums are a form of leisure activity
for which an understanding of visitor motivation is critical, which has been studied in the field of leisure studies previously. Exhibitions, Roberts argues, should be enjoyable, possibly playful and even fun. She describes her thinking as a postmodern vision on the museum field, whilst arguing that the field has been quite slow with acknowledging this importance32. In
other words, the importance of her postmodern thinking in museology builds upon the idea in which neither the collection of the museum nor the display of an exhibition matters, but that the visitor and his or her interpretation is key. Personal experience becomes as legitimate a source of meaning as curatorial knowledge. Exhibitions can be viewed as an eminently interpretative endeavour. It is not only the topic of an exhibition which leads to individual and, therefore, multiple interpretations, also the role of the individual visitor and how they perceive the very act of presentation is of fundamental importance.33
Another scholar Leslie Bedford cites is George Hein, Professor Emeritus in Arts and Social Sciences at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In his influential Learning in the
Museum, Hein introduces the concept of constructivism as a useful theory to describe learning
experiences and educational purposes of museums. He states that since knowledge is constructed by each ‘learner’, the visitor in this case, individually, it does not exist outside the learner. Learning is an active and ongoing construction and transformation of knowledge by individuals. It requires different strategies for different learners such as the amount of prior knowledge and familiarity of artefacts on display. But, as Hein concludes, it most importantly enshrines multiple interpretations and is therefore subject to the individuality of the visitor. 34
However, the manner in which individual visitors perceive certain exhibitions can be extremely different. In the case of Art as Therapy, the intervention by Alain de Botton and Louis Armstrong in Rijksmuseum, this contrast was tremendous. One either loved or hated De Botton and his therapeutic notion of artworks. Rijksmuseum’s project leader Daphne Riabokon states that this is always a risk you take as a progressive museum professional. ‘People are, obviously, in general, different. Some museum visitors are not open for change,
31 Bedford, 14.
32 Lisa C. Roberts, From Knowledge to Narrative: Educators and the Changing Museum (Washington,
Smithsonian Instution Press, 1992), 25.
33 Roberts, 74- 75. 34 Bedford, 28- 29.
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and are reluctant to open up to these new ideas’.35 Furthermore, she agrees with Roberts perception of interpretation and how this constructs meaning towards an exhibition or the image of a museum as a whole.
When looking at the collective feelings an individual should obtain in exhibitions, Birgit Donker, director of the Mondriaanfonds and former editor-in-chief of the Dutch newspaper
NRC Handelsblad, argues that museums actively work on their ability to inspire the visitor.
Donker states that it is much more fascinating to know how the visitor experienced an exhibition, rather than the subject or the visitor rates. Therefore, the Mondriaan Fonds also uses the inspirational value of an exhibition as one of their criteria for assessing grants.36
In any way, it can be stated that the notion of meaning making plays an undeniable importance when looking at visitor studies and the way a visitor subtracts knowledge from a narrative in an exhibition. But how learning is defined, is a matter of perspective attained by the museum professionals rather than a fixed definition. Bedford argues in her book that there are at least four kinds of interrelated outcomes or learning dimensions: learning about content (learning about the subject of the exhibition), learning about onerselves, how to engage, and learning how oneself learns.37 John H. Falk and Lynn Dierking both wrote substantially about learning in museums. They argue that visitors learn inexplicitly in museums, although this learning might differ from solely subtracting factual information out of a museum’s narrative. This is a big leap from the nineteenth century perception that learning happens through the transmission of expert knowledge instead of through the active engagement of the learner itself.
1.2. What adds a ‘personal touch’ to meaning?
1.2.1 Identification
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, one of Bedford’s learning dimensions focuses on the idea that a visitor learns how to engage in a museum exhibition. This engagement can be how a visitor behaves towards other visitors, but much more important is the engagement with the subject of the exhibition.
To emphasise the importance of the audience, curator Tim Streefkerk from the Airborne Museum states that the stories within the Battle of Arnhem narrative should be appealing to
35 Interview Daphne Riabokon, Rijksmuseum (02-05-2017).
36 These grants, nevertheless, originate from governmental money but are independently given to different
projects. See: Birgit Donker ‘Van Dinosnurk tot David Bowie’ Website Mondriaan Fonds:
https://www.mondriaanfonds.nl/blog/van-dinosnurk-tot-david-bowie/ (retrieved on 19 May 2017, 12.22).
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the visitor specifically. Furthermore, he states that the addition of this personal aspect in the exhibition results in an exhibition where the visitor is awed and perhaps even a bit surprised that humour was common in war, as some of the stories tend to have a more humoristic aspect. This is to not only make the exhibition a little more light-hearted, but also to create a certain balance in emotions that are present during wartime.38
Bedford mentions that these examples of exhibitions focus on narratives, or, stories, rather than on objects. The most memorable objects in these exhibitions are words from which visitors can construct their own narrative and experience the journey in both an affective as well as a cognitive matter.39 The visitor learns in a way in which his or her ability of meaning
making is addressed by reflecting upon the personal response to someone else’s life story. Moreover, it also addresses Hein’s notion of constructivism since it draws on personal experiences of a visitor and the association he or she has with the subject on display.
This idea of constructivism seems to be applicable to the biographical exhibitions as well. At least, Birgit Boelens, curator from De Nieuwe Kerk, states that she definitely thinks that the association of the visitor with the exhibition subject is important. For De Nieuwe Kerk, as well as for the Hermitage Amsterdam, the urge to add this personal aspect to their exhibition was a carefully considered decision. For Boelens personally, the success of these exhibitions are due to our contemporary and anonymous society, in which individuality becomes more and more important. She exemplifies her statement with the fact that the reason why people want to share so much is a result of the fact that there is an everlasting search for oneself and for meaning in any way possible. Furthermore, Boelens also sees the insecurity in mirroring oneself to others and it controlling your life. Looking at other people’s stories, full with inspiring or tragic events, can help with the interpretation of one’s own life and teach something about one’s own experiences.40
Philosopher John Dewey builds upon the constructivist notion of gaining knowledge through experience by stating that imagination leads to these new experiences and, furthermore, results in adding knowledge to the individual.41 It is, at the same time, the interaction between
the work and the human experiencing the object that makes exhibitions meaningful. In as early as 1934, Dewey published Art as Experience in which he elaborates further on the notion of aesthetic experiences in museums and marks the importance of the interpretations and imagination of the visitor. ‘No two sunsets have exactly the same red’, in other words:
38 Interview Tim Streefkerk, Airborne Museum Oosterbeek (20-04-2017). 39 Bedford, 36.
40 Interview Birgit Boelens, Stichting De Nieuwe Kerk en Hermitage Amsterdam (02-05-2017). 41 Bedford, 81.
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every visitor has his or her own individual interpretation of an artwork, which is a result of his or her prior aesthetic experiences.42
One of the scholars that has been researching the therapeutic values of exhibitions is Lois Silverman. She argues that meaning can be applied to the museum experience in four different definitions. Apart from the intention of the museum (their meaning) and the previously mentioned understanding of something by the visitor, it is particularly interesting to look at the individual’s subjective value of something. Silverman states that this is an important definition of meaning making in museum experiences since it makes exhibitions personal and it makes people reflect upon their own lives.43 She calls this the ‘magic’ of the museum, in
which moments of ‘enchantment transpire when people interact with things’.44
With concern to interaction with objects, Birgit Boelens elaborates further on the biographical aspect in the exhibition Romanov and Revolution in the Hermitage Amsterdam. Boelens explains that they have explicitly chosen to use the personal narrative of the last Romanov family, since it becomes recognisable for the audience. The Russian Revolution of 1917 is already a well-known event; the assassination of the czar and his entire family being particularly famous. But, by adding extremely personal belongings such as Alexandra’s diary or son’s Alexei’s teddy bear, as well as focusing on their feelings and opinions in the explanatory notes, the Hermitage makes the life story of the last Russian monarch and his family palpable for the twenty-first century Dutch museum visitor (figure 5). The visitor empathises with the family, creating some sort of bond or relationship with them, which is something that can only be achieved with a biographical approach towards the exhibition narrative, Boelens states. 45
Silverman underlines this notion by stating that museums are, and have always been, about human relationships and how social structures are perceived in it. Nevertheless, she argues that museums are often not aware of their social function and think too narrow-mindedly about their task within the bigger context of the society. The museum in our contemporary society should not be about something or even for somebody, but it should be for us all, Bedford states in agreement to Silverman.46
Falk and Dierking elaborate further on Silverman’s notion, stating that museums
contribute to the forming of a social identity for individuals. Museums can predict and plan for a successful visitation by understanding how they influence a visitor. According to Falk
42 John Dewey, Art as Experience (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1934): 215. 43 Lois H. Silverman, The Social Work of Museums (New York: Routledge, 2009), 5. 44 Idem, 7.
45 Interview Birgit Boelens, Stichting De Nieuwe Kerk en Hermitage Amsterdam (02-05-2017). 46 Bedford, 43.
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and Dierking, it is not just the physical context of a museum building which makes a visitor experience. Both the personal, meaning how they as individuals enter a museum as a visitor, as well as the social context (who they are with) are of major importance.47
The human touch is visible in every aspect of the museum, from the entrance until the gift shop. Both Streefkerk and Blühm think empathy is key in this notion. The same message reaches much more visitors when it has this personal touch in it. ‘They remember much more of a certain subject in that way’. 48 According to Boelens, this human touch is what makes the
history a bit more comprehensible and tangible.
1.2.2 Emotions and empathy
The notion of empathizing with the narrative on display illustrates the importance of emotions in exhibitions. Museums worldwide are becoming more successful in attracting a broader audience due to the fact that they have witnessed that it is not enough to display an academically correct and factual exhibition. The museum, as the Museums Association of Great Britain stated during their annual meeting in 2013, needs to become a place in which emotions are encouraged through storytelling and where a visceral response is preferable to an intellectual one.49
Emotions, in their turn, can be triggered through a strong imagination within an exhibition narrative. David Bowie passed away on January 10th 2016 during the Groningen exhibition. Museum-director Andreas Blühm describes how the exhibition changed, from being an upbeat and celebratory festivity to a memorial service, whilst no single object or explanatory note changed.50 Nevertheless, the Groninger Museum used the hallway as a small condolence space, which eventually led to five large books full of messages to Bowie (figure 6).
In a way, curiosity as a consequence of the anonymous world we live in plays an important role in why these kind of exhibitions are relevant, according to Birgit Boelens. People want to share everything, such as their faces by taking selfies or what they are doing through updates on social media. Moreover, Boelens mentions how these kind of exhibitions, or the biographical approach to narratives in general, help with the search for oneself. A large part of its relevance is due to the people’s urge to feel inspired by someone else’s life choices
47 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience (Walnut Creek, Left Coast Press, 1992), 6. 48 Interview Andreas Blühm, Groninger Museum (04 – 05 – 2017).
49 Bedford, 50.
50 Andreas Blühm mentioned in the interview that there were many requests and questions whether they
would adjust the exhibition, but they deliberately chose to keep the exhibition the way it was designed by the Victoria and Albert museum in order to celebrate his craftsmanship and his life.
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or empathise with them. By triggering this sentiment in visitors through a dramatic life story, the previously mentioned empathetic feelings emerge.
Nevertheless, the pitfall of the emotional aspect in exhibitions is that it may manipulate feelings. Both Birgit Boelens and Tim Streefkerk recognise this pitfall, stating that they deliberately chose the objects on display and discussed with the rest of the museum staff whether emotionally loaded objects, such as children’s toys and teddy bears or murder weapons, should be on display. Boelens thinks that manipulation is solely a perception, and how one perceives the emotions of an exhibition depends on the individual. ‘Art is not supposed to be only beautiful. Something always needs to happen between you and what you see. This can be recognising the colour or something from your past’, she adds. This personal completion of an exhibition is what makes or breaks its success, Boelens concludes.51
Imagination is the ability of an individual to look beyond reality and think about possible situations. It is tied to our ability to form images in the mind, which automatically is linked to emotions that we feel whilst visiting an exhibition. Through this somatic understanding, a visitor is able to learn by using all of their senses.52
Often, the emotional value of an exhibition is not explicitly visible in its narrative, but can be witnessed through smaller details. Photographs of Polish villagers who were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust, for instance, lessens the abstractness of mass murder and brings it to life by using the specificity of individual faces. The same goes with objects. Small, common objects, on which I will elaborate further in the second chapter, can be exceptionally powerful narrators of emotion for some visitors since it evokes a certain familiarity to them. This, as a result, can lead to empathy and empathetic feelings towards the person’s life that is on display.
Concerning this notion of empathy, Andreas Blühm states that the exhibition about David Bowie had a great impact on the emotions of the visitors. The Groninger Museum, for instance, received many comments from visitors on how Bowie was a part of their lives. They stated, for example, how his liquidity in gender transformations helped them as struggling teenagers to accept who they were. ‘We never expected this kind of power of Bowie’s personality and his characters, and we definitely underestimated it. Our side programme featured lectures of important academic professors such as Herman Pleij [Dutch historian red.] who took the notion of the relics culture in the middle ages as an example for the current
51 Interview Birgit Boelens, Stichting De Nieuwe Kerk en Hermitage Amsterdam (02-05-2017).
52 A.J. Pekariks, Z.D. Doering & D.A. Karns, ‘Exploring satisfying experiences in museums.’ (Curator 1999 (43)):
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ideas of fan culture and stardom.’53 Blühm was drawn to Bowie’s sudden change of personas that he adopted for the stage and in films in particular. This made the exhibition, according to him, even more special and valuable, since Bowie subsequently broke down his carefully designed image and persona and kept reinventing himself. By having personal objects on display, such as handwritten lyrics or costumes of his various tours, the visitor can feel the presence of the person more vividly. Herman Pleij, emeritus professor of Dutch Literature at the University of Amsterdam, described this stardom as a form of relic culture. The proximity of a celebrity who radiates something special makes us feel special too. To be able to touch or look at something which was owned or used by this person makes us feel connected in a way and, moreover, it makes the person more tangible.54 It is exactly this tangibility that is extremely important. An object becomes more valuable when a photograph in which the person is portrayed with it is on display as well.
Tim Streefkerk further elaborates on the notion of empathy by stating that both the museum professional as well as the visitor benefit from the empathy these biographical approaches towards exhibition designs generate. Although he states that EGO is complement to the permanent chronological exhibition in the Airborne Museum, Streefkerk thinks that the visitor learns more from the personal stories on display in EGO. Nevertheless, the chronological exhibition gives much more knowledge, as it is based on written texts, timelines and so on. Streefkerk thinks that the empathetic feelings the visitor has when reading personal stories of citizens and soldiers in the Second World War creates, on the one hand, a dialogue (as I will further elaborate on in the second chapter), but on the other hand contributes to creating a vivid memory which is more lasting then a chronological narrative. In other words: because their stories are feasible, relatable and human, a visitor is able to sympathise with personal choices in wartime much more easily. Streefkerk believes that, as a result, these personal narratives help to understand the difficult choices people have to make during wartime and how everyone experiences war in their own way. However, they they came together through time and the moment.55
53 Idem.
54 Look, for example, at the idea of philography, meaning collecting autographs by celebrities. This effect is
evident here as well. Wendy Foranow, anthropology professor at the Glendall Community College, specializes in the music industry and its anthropological methods. She states that autographs give people who feel intimate to celebrities something tangible to possess. It serves as a personal touch. She, furthermore, links it to cultural tourism and the Polynesian sacred concept of ‘Mana’, in which the power of the elemental forces of nature are embodied in an object or a person. See for more information on this topic: Wendy Foranow, Empire
of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2006).
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1.3. The popularity of biographical approaches in culture
1.3.1 The Biographical Method
The biography as a literary genre was established around the nineteenth century. Books in this genre could be characterised as long and substantial narratives devoted to one single individual. Biographies aimed to incorporate intimate details of a person’s life.
Biographical approaches towards media such as books and films is, according to historian Hayden White, bound to feature a certain fictionality, since it simply cannot avoid emplotment to any extent. This is also the case with historiography in general, White argues. This postmodernist historiography marks the distinction between fiction and non-fiction which is, according to White, solely a difference of degree and not of nature.56 Furthermore, White introduced the term ‘historiophoty’, meaning the ‘representation of history and our thought about history in visual images and filmic discourse’.57 The rise of modern media simply hands the historian more tools for research. However, it is uncertain when White refers to filmic discourse whether he means feature films as well, or solely archival material and moving images. In any case, other scholars touched upon the idea of fictionality within biographical depictions of history. Joanny Moulin, French professor English Literature at the University of Marseille and president of the French Biography Society, cites social scientist and philosopher Ian Jarvie who claims that no movie or book can be regarded as a transparent window of the world. As a response, Moulin broadens Jarvies statement, by stating that basically everything in this world is biased. The historian solely works with interpretations, so ‘fakery’ as Jarvie accuses the medium film of, is generally always visible in representations of history, he concludes.58
Although it cannot be denied that biographies have gained popularity in the past decades, scholars in the field have been, and still are, struggling with theorising the terminology of biography. Both Moulin and Renders state that it is quite difficult to find a satisfactory
56 Hayden White, ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.’ Critical Inquiry (Vol. 7, No. 1,
(Autumn, 1980)): 6.
57 Hayden White,’Historiography and Historiophoty’, The American Historical Review (Vol. 93, No.5,(Dec.
1988)). In Moulin: 8. ‘historiophoty’ contradicts the term ‘historiography’ which is generally defined as being the representation of history in written texts.
58 Moulin: 10-11. Moreover, later scholars such as Robert Rosenstone argue the opposite notion.He states that
film actually suggests new possibilities for representing the past. Narratives in history are always visible and visual images such as film can change the ways in which we look at the past. Rosenstone concludes his statement by saying that ‘history does not exist until it is created’ (Robert. A. Rosenstone ’History in Images/History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film‘, The American
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definition, since it is often unclear where non-fiction stops and fiction begins in a narrative.59 One thing that is absolutely certain is that biographical approaches have had an increasing impact in cultural products such as films, literature and, to a certain extent, in the museum world. Moulin refers to this ‘biographisation’ of the media as an aspect of a broader ‘biographical turn’ which has been taking place in both the arts and humanities since the start of the twenty-first century.60 The biographical turn, a phrase coinedby Dutch historians Binne
de Haan, Jonne Hamsma and Hans Renders, pleads for more sufficient research of biographies, since their popularity and importance are increasing in a fast pace. In their monograph, titled The Biographical Turn, De Haan, Hamsma and Renders emphasise that the individual can have a tremendous impact on the past and can be just as important for historical narratives as biographies of kings, actors and presidents.
Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Southampton Michael Benton describes the genre of biography as ranging on a continuum. According to him the ‘documentary biography’ is opposite to the ‘aesthetic biography’. In the documentary version of a biography, the emphasis is on an individual’s life whilst its aesthetic compeer merely functions as a narrative shape giving a certain comprehensive coherence to life in general.61 The assumption that biographies on the continuum have to be either history or fiction seems a bit too narrow and contradicts with White’s notion of ‘emplotment’. Nevertheless, in both forms of biographies, the author always made certain choices in adapting the life of an individual to paper, or exhibition.
1.3.2. Biographical narratives in popular culture: literature and film
One of the most well known outcomes of this biographical turn is the biography as a literary genre. In a biography there is always the author – the biographer – and the subject – the biographee. One of the most striking things about biographies is their popularity among all sorts of readers. Biographies can be life-spanning, meaning that the narrative describes the biographee’s story from birth to current time. However, in recent years, a striking number of books have been published as partial biography. In these books, there is a strong focus on one period or even one event because of which someone has become famous. Its function is to serve not only as an understanding of this person’s life, but also to be able to examine the entire environment and the history beyond someone’s life.
59 Moulin: 3, Renders, Hans, Haan, Binne de and Harmsma, Jonne. The Biographical Turn. Lives in History (New
York: Routledge, 2016): 4.
60 Moulin: 4.
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The popularity of biographies have, on the one hand, lead to more distinguished studies of different approaches in biographies. However, on the other hand, Hans Renders argues that its popularity caused it to receive a label of being an objectionable genre. Arguments are often based on the principle in which the biographer – the author – never managed any form of big success and therefore ‘parasites’ on interesting and talented human beings. Or to paraphrase this notion: biographers take advantage of someone else’s life.62 Moreover, Benton’s book on
the literary biography opens with a sentence which needs no further context: ‘No-one, it seems, has a good word to say for biographers, not even the biographers themselves.’63
The literary representation implies conversion as a logical precondition for the coherence of a story. The representation of the self in narratives such as autobiographies involves a separation between the past self whose story is narrated and the present self that is the narrator of the story. When the story pretends to be true, definitive, and concluded, it implies simultaneously a continuity between the narrator and the protagonist, so that the intimate details of the story may be known, and a discontinuity, providing an Archimedean point from which the story of the former self may be judged with apparent objectivity and detachment.64 In one of his most recent works, Renders reflects upon new biographies and biographical approaches in the year 2016 in the Netherlands. He opens his article by stating that the culture of the biography is well connected to a strong focus on national tradition, but has a striking international orientation as well. A reason for the strong focus on Dutch national icons is a result of two projects, one in the 1980s and one in 2007, by the Prins Bernard Cultuurfonds that invited Dutch writers, mainly experienced biographers, to write a biography of a Dutch key figure in history. Their salaries were funded by the Cultuurfonds and financed by the government as well, who granted nine of them 40.000 Euros every two years, in order to promote the genre. 65 A bit further in the text, Renders elaborates on the reasons why the
Dutch Biography Institute was constituted in 2004. Renders argues that it is important to understand the role biographies play in society and as a construction of public opinion within this society. Individuality and biography do not necessarily go hand in hand, and whether an individual is relevant will depend on the culture in which the biography is released, Hans Renders states. This, in its own way, often introduces a political component to the literary
62 Hans Renders, 'De biografische methode', in: Gerrit Voerman en Dirk Jan Wolffram [ed.], Kossmann Instituut.
Benaderingen van de geschiedenis van politiek, Kossmann Instituut, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen 2006: 39.
63 Benton, Literary Biography: XV.
64 John Freccero “Autobiography and Narrative”: 21.
65 Hans Renders, ‘Biography in the Public Sphere: The Year in The Netherlands’ Biography (2016, vol. 39, no.4):
