Globalisation and Heritage Reflected in the Museum Arena

Globalisation and Heritage Reflected in

the Museum Arena:

A case study of three municipal modern and contemporary art museums and their displays in the Netherlands and their ongoing negotiation between local and global

modalities.

Alyxandra Westwood – 11742755 University of Amsterdam, Netherlands MA Heritage Studies (Museum Studies), Thesis

Supervisor: Dr. Dos Elshout

Second Reader: Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes

27.02.2019 Word count: 24,751

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements………. 4

Introduction………..………. 5

Sense Making in the 21st Century………..

5

The Local and Global Museum………

6

Research………..

9

Chapter 1……….16

The Trickling down effect: Local and International relationships reflected in museums of modern and contemporary art in the Netherlands

Chapter 2……….37

Museum Architecture: Towards an understanding of Identity, process and engagement

Chapter 3……….51

Curatorial Practices: ‘Stedelijk’ Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Netherlands

Conclusion………..74

Bibliography………79

Image Index………89

– For P.W.W

Thanks for dragging me kicking and screaming to museums

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Dos Elshout for guiding me through this

experience, but also for being patient with extensions and flexible with meeting hours, but above all, by bringing humour to all of our meetings. I would also like to thank my second reader Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes for also dedicating time to read my work. I am also grateful to Charles Esche, Leontine Coelewij, Dierdre Carasso, Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Bart Rutten for graciously setting aside time in their busy schedules to participate in interviews with me, and also Marleen Lucia Schans for being my co-interviewer. Thanks also to Annemarie Weerman and Julija Mockutė for being my thesis confidants and for observantly pointing out that I had in fact two chapters in one, resulting in a much - needed break-through moment.

I would like to thank my family for all their support both internationally and locally, without which I wouldn’t have been able to move to the Netherlands and pursue my creative projects and endeavours. My mother Janet, thanks so much for listening to me complain and cry and always helping me to see the light at the end of the tunnel in the turbulent experience that comes with writing and creating. My other mother Jules for always pushing me to be strong and independent and always seeing the strength in my ideas and encouraging me tirelessly. To my father Peter, thanks for all the long conversations over the phone about neo-liberalism and politics but mostly for giving me that moment in the day, no matter what, to discuss painting, when I had no time to actually make one. My brothers Tilman and Caspar, and my dearest friends Georgia, Isabella and Summer, who always show me that oceans don’t mean a thing when it comes to love and family, and also my Dutch family, Astrid and Peter, who always give me a home away from home.

Lior, thank you for always logically and pragmatically showing me how to stay strong and focused. Thank you for being patient as I rattled on about museums day in and day out. You always support me and keep me grounded when my mind tends to run away with itself, but most importantly thank you for inspiring me and dreaming with me ambitiously about exciting futures.

Introduction

Sense making in the 21st century

“The question of the global versus the local is now the central issue in artistic and cultural

debates. However, the global and the local are not separate entities positioned to fight against each other. Instead they are two sides to the same coin.”1

South African artist William Kentridge discusses in an interview in 2014, the possibility an artwork has to assist in making sense of the world rather than acting as an instructional object in defining what the world means. This can only be achieved when working in 2 what Kentridge refers to as the periphery, a space which is not defined, but a space of consistent transitivity and change allowing for openness and discovery.

Kentridge’s ideas project and discuss the current and historic condition of societies and the prolonged effects which globalisation has had on the world and, with it, artistic practice. Kentridge comments through his work and with his presentation, the morphing nature of categorisation within society and how by remaining on the periphery this may be the place in which to reside to truly discover something new.

The museum has become increasingly a more dynamic space in housing artworks and programs which deliberate these categories which describe the limits of contemporary society, evolving in parallel to society outside its doors. Although the museum has not always been a peripheral and accommodating space, it has shown potential in a move towards more transparency and acknowledgement of its past discrepancies.

Hou Hanru, “Initiatives, alternatives: notes in a temporary and raw state,” In How Latitudes Become 1

Forms: Art in the Global Age’ ed. P. Vergne (Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Centre, 2003), 36-9.

William Kentridge, “How We Make Sense of the World,” interview by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art,

2

Louisiana Channel, October 1, 2014, video 30:24, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G11wOmxoJ6U.

This shows a practice with more of a collaborative tone, instead of one acting as a dictator of ideals, which aims to work together with artists and the art works that either reside or take up temporary residency behind its walls. Although there has been progress, in recent years tensions have arisen in questioning what the museum as an institution does for contemporary societies, and how it functions as an important connecting node between public, private and governmental bodies. What arises is a negotiation, a mutual discussion or arrangement of terms, in which various parties or stakeholders

communicate and react to one another in order to come to an understanding. The stakeholders involved in museum practices, and even more so in the practices of museums with ties to municipalities, all play key roles in the responsibility of presenting exhibitions to audiences as a means of making sense of the rapidly shifting world around us. This new cultural shift moves away from the industrialist period of the twentieth century, focused on production. Instead, post-modern times prioritise communication and information above all else; sometimes referred to as the communication or digital age. One key consequential shift is the issue of the local narrative versus the global narrative. This issue isn’t so much a problem but a misunderstanding, and it has crossed over into the museum world, affecting museums societally. But museums also, in turn, are making it a part of their program, in order to face the issue head on. Postmodernism can be characterised as a time, in some ways, of complete redistribution economically as the world comes to terms with its globality.

This has caused two things to happen in the museum world, one after the other. First, in the mid nineteen-nineties, museums started to participate in the tourism industry, by producing exhibitions like machines, creating what has been coined by Guy Debord as experiences powered by the spectacle, meaning that exhibitions became a 3

commoditised experience, becoming more concerned with market positions and audience numbers than being critically engaged. This was in line with most other experience-based destinations in the entertainment industry, and suddenly museums were compared to amusement parks instead of the places of ritual and education for which they had previously been. This event caused a sky rocketing effect in the number of museums which multiplied to join the market, but because museums – especially museums with a stake in national identity – have ties to education and critical discourse and always have, this way of functioning was unsustainable. Especially as older museums

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, (Detroit: Black & Red 1983).

whose history lay in their municipal collections, had to innovate in order to keep up with the rapidly changing times.

Instead, museums began to question their own status, especially due to the redistribution of funds, and shift to a more business-oriented model to function as a corporation. As museums started to multiply, the definition of what a museum was began to diminish. What finally took shape was a post-modern institution which was a hybrid new version of the past modernisation experience. Incorporating now questions of social and communal negotiation, the changing process brought along various visible signs which still remain and contribute to the museum today.

The idea of the negotiation is a beginning in understanding what curator Hou Hanru is outlining when he speaks about the misguided opposition of local versus global in cultural debates. Although these areas may seem distanced, they are intrinsically linked and related, and should not be positioned to fight against each other, but rather engaged to communicate with one another through negotiation. Contemporary society as we know it has shifted towards an era which is characterised by connectivity through digitalisation, enabling the ability for simulation of individual localities to be created anywhere.

Museums, the cultural arenas of the twenty-first century, not only enact debates of the international art world at large, but also react to their site specificity - one influencing the other, which creates space for programming much like a cultural hub. This newly minted museum model has proven to be one prioritising physical and communal engagement, which can be seen as either due to a response to a society living increasingly isolated and individualised lives due to digitalisation and social media, or due to the necessity of

maintaining credibility in creating a unique experience because of growing competition in the amount of museums. Never-the-less, this model attempts to close gaps in the

museological discourse by reassessing priority of relationships with both partners, audiences and artists combined. This thesis researches and interrogates the problems and negotiations museums with municipal collections of modern and contemporary art encounter when experiencing societal shifts due to globalisation.

The local and global museum

The physicalisation of past, present and future cultural identities of Western Europe have long found places in the vitrines and collection displays of museums since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Objects have been collected and exhibited as a means of outlining political power and identity by the re-territorialisation of stolen artefacts to

appoint a nation with the image of hierarchical power. On the other hand, objects have also been collected as a way of preserving fragments of the continually changing landscapes of their local surroundings. These combinations of foreign and local exchanges through the placing together of collections under one roof, describe the museum’s multifaceted face of site specificity. The museum itself is a static architectural structure which resides cemented to the ground, yet objects flow in and around its domain in varying configurations. These configurations have a lot to do with the social and historical landscape deconstructing and forming outside of its walls. The museum acts as a location of, as Mark Rectus explains with the help of Martin Prösler, the exemplification of the flowing nature of trends and attitudes through the vessel – the object – and its placement in context:

‘…Museum’s links to politics, the economy and the nation states have, historically, been expressed throughout the materiality of its collections. In this regard, the museum’s historical and territorial expansion: occurred in close connection with those political factors in globalisation which have provided the contemporary world order with basic structure. Moreover the museum was, and remains,

epistemologically a space in which the world is ordered, in which, with the

assistance of material objects, the world is realised, understood and mediated.’ 4

Strictly speaking, the museum is founded on being one of the places on earth where visitors have been taught to come and expect to be educated about how to draw

perspective, attempting to navigate goings-on in the world, often locally but increasingly globally. The museum in this case acts as a sort of crossroad for information. This

ordered environment, or micro-environments, created within the walls of the museum, gives visitors the chance to have an overview of issues unfolding in a moderated environment with signposts helping them to find their way through the maze on how to understand what exactly links societal discourse today. With this power to narrate comes 5 certain sensitivities and responsibilities in the ways societies and objects are displayed in relation to their surroundings. Furthermore, the museum also has the ability to disrupt and encourage autonomous choice making for attitudes around what makes up our societal material and relation to one another.

Mark W. Rectanus, “Globalization: Incorporating the Museum”, In A Companion to Museum Studies ed.

4

Sharon Macdonald (West Sussex: Wiley&Blackwell, 2011) 381-97. Ibid.

Does this mean that the museum is able to claim that it presents to its audiences an accurate and evenly mediated indication of the world at large? Furthermore, is it also able to pay enough attention to the inevitability of its site-specific state of stasis? When

museums can’t move physically, does and should this give them limitations in prioritising what narratives should be told over others?

The matter of prioritisation by local and global demands not only mean the demands of the audiences, it means the demands of the objects as well. When objects are exchanged between continents so readily, it is easy to forget the implications of re-contextualisation and the intervening possibility for the creation of locality within the authoritative walls of the museum arena. The creation of locality is a critical dimension developed by

anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, who goes on to comment in chapter 9 of his book

Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalisation, the reproduction of locality is ‘…a fragile and difficult achievement’. The reproduction of locality inevitably has to deal with 6 the corrosion of context in its decontextualised environment. The creation of locality in the museum arena can also have an array of other defining features. Museums were, after all, also ‘showrooms’ for technological developments of surrounding areas, especially during modernisation processes. They were not comprised simply of the collecting of exotic treasures to display and parade, but also of the presentation of the development of the country or province where the museum resided. Examples of this in the Netherlands can be seen in historical collections of municipal and national museums, such as the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam or the Centraal Museum, Utrecht.

Often museums eventuated as a way to project an image of progress or change, not just nationally but regionally or municipally as well. A municipality is the formation of a

community which outlines the differentiations between regional jurisdictions. Often

municipalities have their own sets of laws and traditions which have been developed with slight differences to accommodate, through a local choice for independence and

community, and status and image of emancipation.

Many countries have vast differences in dialect and language from town to town, especially as the result of historical unification processes combining a few or many provinces to form one country, which also has taken its toll on national identity. The

Arjun Appadurai, “ The Production of Locality”, In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation

6

Netherlands is an example of this; diversity between provinces is vast and has resulted in varying ways in management for municipal museum collections for different reasons. This reflects the demands and changing image of the cities, and the relationship which the museum has to the governmental bodies. Keeping up with these relationships has been an important but difficult task for museums, as directors and staff change, sometimes as often as the city council, and with them so do the policies. Some cities which are closer to what is referred to as the metropolis areas, have been impacted by these changes more than others, but also local developments to do with population growth and

migration. As a result museums are weighted down with the responsibility to compete in international markets to project an image of a progressive city. 7

The Globalist describes globalism and globalisation as two separate modalities . They 8 are related but separate. Globalism is nothing more than a description of the world’s interconnectedness through networks and connections that make contact over multi-continental stretches of distance. It endeavours to explain the relationships of the connected modern world and the clusters of patterns which underlie it. Globalisation, however, is a much more debated term. More than term, it is a way of describing a theoretical state, referring to the increase and decline of the extent of globalism. It attempts to predict the movements of the forces which govern globalism, and tries to determine the speeds in which these adjust. 9

The museum as an arena depicts the continued shift of its local surroundings and has therefore, to some extent, also depicted varying degrees of globalisation. Demographic changes are a perfect opportunity for museums to address the increasingly

interconnected world. Art and its power to assist in making sense of the world has also changed with the demographics, with museums showing more commissioned, interactive and immersive artworks alongside and sometime new models which include collection presentations.

Renée Kistemaker, “Introduction to the conference” in City Museums as centres of civic dialogue,

7

(Amsterdam: Amsterdam Historical Museum, 2006) 4.

Note: this will also be explored in chapter one in regards to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. note: The Globalist also outlines that globalism can be measured in terms of thick and thin, so it has

8

always existed in one way or another, just to differing degrees. For example, the exchanges between people on the silk road, this was a thin degree of globalisation as the only point of contact is face to face exchange of goods.

“Globalism vs Globalisation”, accessed October 3, 2018, https://www.theglobalist.com/globalism-versus-globalization/.

Ibid.

Art critic and theorist David Joselit has been developing a new project entitled Heritage and Debt, in which he deliberates over arts globality and what that exactly means. Joselit refers to two terms which will be helpful in understanding where exhibition practice sits today: ‘… the ratio between that which is inherited from a culture and that which it owes to other cultures.’ This is precisely where this thesis takes its position – a ratio of varying 10 vantages. As discussed above, the museum, much like an artwork as described by

William Kentridge, can act as a catalyst for negotiation, in making sense of the world with the assistance of objects as well as community participation and collaboration. With museums whose anchor is in public character, it becomes complicated when

accommodating new definitions of home, history and hierarchy. Historical and political responsibility is held over the museum’s head, making it virtually impossible to make a clean shift of identity in the name of cultural innovation.

Research

For the purpose of this research, a sociological approach has been employed supported by art historical perspectives. This approach was chosen because a large part of the research investigates societal shifts which have resulted in changes to both the internal structures of the museum, display of artworks and modes of spectatorship. Furthermore, the sociological perspective allows the research to take a step back in order to also examine the art historical canon in a critical manner in relation to local and global contexts.

Limitations have been drawn to focus on cultural events and institutions primarily in the Netherlands, with references to some other institutions in Western Europe and the United States. This was decided to illustrate and investigate the vast differences between three municipal museums and their relationships to their local provinces, and also their

modalities of display in the wider global network of contemporary art. Municipal

museums have at times drawn limits in prioritisation in order to keep a hold over their own autonomy, and this can be seen in the research particularly in regards to the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.

As the focus will be on modern and contemporary art, museums have been chosen whose main mission is to collect, present and display mainly modern and contemporary

David Joselit, “Heritage and Debt”, Lecture Walker Arts Centre, February 12, 2015, video 1:43:18, https://

10

art in collection displays and temporary exhibitions. The aim and objective of the research is to discuss the dialectic involved in the problem: How do the exhibition displays and modalities of stedelijk (city) museums of modern and contemporary art in the Netherlands mediate and act in the field of tension between local and global demands? 11

This research will also focus on the term ‘image’, not just in the definition of a physical representation of person, or thing, but also in reference to a conception of the

representation as part of an identity. This will be helpful in researching purposeful

changes in museum practices and also in investigating why these changes occurred, who they are aimed at and what the repercussions are past present and future.

Case Studies

The museums that have been selected as case studies are: the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven; the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.

Firstly, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, founded in 1874, and one of the most famous modern and contemporary art museums of the Netherlands, with a historically

progressive and international focus, which in recent years has experienced much debate regarding the functionality of the museum and its audience, but is indeed considered an icon of Amsterdam, which has also had its own consequences for the museum.

Second, the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, founded in 1936 as a way to preserve and exhibit contemporary Dutch art of the surrounding areas, with one of the founding decrees of the project, “… being a permanent point of contact between the whole population of the city and the surrounding area of Eindhoven and the Museum: it must become part of the living community.” 12

According to the Van Abbemuseum website, overs the years this decree has become a reality. This research will show that there have been periods of inconsistency with this motto, resulting in some disturbances in the relationship between the museum and the municipality. The museum has expanded its collections greatly, especially after world war two, where the Netherlands, after being devastated at the hands of nationalism during the war, aligned itself with more of the American way of running things: less national and more privatised, creating increasingly internationally focused museum structure and

note: Stedelijk translated from dutch means: city, urban or municipal.

11

“1936: The Opening”, Van Abbemuseum, accessed October 16, 2018, https://vanabbemuseum.nl/en/

12

ideology . This did not only take place in Eindhoven but affected the whole of the nation 13 during a process of rebuilding and coming to terms with the deep wounds of the second world war.

Third, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, will be analysed with the aforementioned

museums, as after recent difficulties its main focus is on its community value, promoting in its mission: “…We live in a time of individualisation and globalisation, in which you have to make an effort in getting to know and understand the people around you.” The 14

mission of the museum connects art with understanding, and the collection focuses solely on Dutch art, converting after the war – based on the decisions of the city council of Schiedam – to focus on living artists instead of solely historical artworks. In

conversation with current director Deirdre Carasso, it has become apparent that the museum has experienced many upheavals and disconnection from the local

communities, which has resulted in the museum focusing on its relationship with the local community of Schiedam as top priority, in order to keep its unique character in the

museological landscape.

The museum’s collection has been refined further to follow three main priorities: experimental and informal art of the CoBrA movement of 1945 – 1960; Serial and Systematic theory on the boundaries of painting between the years of 1960 – present; and engagement art from the 1990s – present, artworks which deal with social

engagement and developments.

These three examples all from varying regions in the Netherlands are vastly different but still continue to make use of the word ‘stedelijk’ (city) in their title, with the only exception being Van Abbemuseum, whose logo and title has evolved by dropping the word

stedelijk. This is significant to mention as each museum is vastly different in its evolved current state, with different values to the word ‘stedelijk’, which carries into the identity of the museums.

All have progressed beyond museums who simply house municipal collections and this research uncovers how each of these institutions has dealt with problems concerning globalisation in their own way locally. Relationships between the museum, city councils and other defining relationships are examined in chapter one, to outline the

consequences these relationships have had on the changing personality of the museum

Steven ten Thije, The emancipated museum (Amsterdam: Mondriaan Fonds, 2017) 38-9.

13

“Missie”, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, accessed October 16, 2018, https://

14

and its audiences. This has also been in collaboration with the various artistic directors of the museums, and in some cases even acting as director across more than one of the case studies.

Chapter two explores museum architecture as an example of the changing face of the museum in response to museum trends worldwide as well as the changing demands of the city. This is taking in to consideration the impact which the problem of gigantism has had on museum experience and displays, but more specifically the value of space. This is in regards to a trend both locally and globally, with museums expanding physically to an alarming degree. The 'Globalisation Paradigm in Museum Architecture’ is analysed, which examines the increased use of reputable architects for museum expansions as a way of attempting to market the museum as an important landmark and also as a key element in community identity. This also includes the internal programs of the museum as it shifts 15 to an active and dynamic model, as a centre for social debate and discourse in inclusivity.

Chapter three analyses and explores display methods, especially permanent collection displays over the past 10 years, as being both indicators of shifts in perception for how society comes to understand and value different types of art and information today. This is investigated by firstly underpinning the research by looking at the evolution of

exhibitions and the art object, in parallel with societal factors like industrial evolution and modernism. Then following on with how the shift from prioritisation of object and medium to prioritisation of concept and process has affected displays, and can also be seen as a direct result of artists reactions to societal changes.

More importantly, it is argued that with this in mind, an exhibition model which prioritises process, documentation and information is fitting today, given societies shift towards the information era. This era prioritises real time information and a blurring of lines not just between artwork and exhibition but also between process and outcome, which is evident in the exhibition models analysed in the following pages. Audience engagement has become not just an addition but an important facet to the exhibition complex.

Beginning with the rupture of art history in the Belvedere Garden in Rome in the fifteenth century, and moving to Gottfried Semper’s writings on the ‘Ideal Museum’ as a way of

Bernd Nicolai. 2016 “The Globalisation Paradigm in Museum Architecture”,NYU Abu Dhabi Institute video

15

bringing together art and industry as a response to the Great Exhibition of 1851, and moving on to Walter Benjamin’s theory of the art object in the wake of technological reproduction. 16 17

These theories, combined with Pine and Gilmore’s theories on the museums evolution into the experience economy and Guy Debord’s theory of ‘the spectacle’ is employed as a way to understand how this has had a ricocheting effect systematically in the valuing of art and exhibitions in museums today in a world where everything is considered a

commodity. Finally, Boris Groys’ new theories on the next phase of Walter Benjamin’s 18 19 1930s theory, is analysed as a way of understanding the context of today, with regard to the impact that digitalisation has had. 20

This research has been developed using a multifaceted approach towards gathering data, including empirical and qualitative research methods, underpinned by both sociological and art theory. The final outcome is a result of field work and analysis which evaluates current exhibition displays and museum missions through interviews with curators, directors and artists who work in and together with museums housing municipal collections across the Netherlands, or who work with subjects reflecting on public engagement and society, as a way to understand and argue the urgency in the problem museums face navigating local and global discourses.

Gottfried Semper, The Ideal Museum: Practical Art in Metals and Hard Materials, 1st ed. 1852, (2nd ed.

16

Vienna: MAK, 2007).

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility. second version ed.

17

Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty and Thomas Y. Levin, trans. Edmund Jephcott, (Harvard: Harvard College, 2008).

Pine, B. Joseph and Gilmore, James H. “Satisfaction, Sacrifice, Surprise: three small steps create one

18

giant leap into the experience economy” Strategy & Leadership 28, no.1, (2000): 18-23.

Debord, The Spectacle, 1989.

19

Boris Groys, In the Flow, (Verso Books, 2016).

Chapter 1.

The Trickling down effect:

Global and local relationships reflected in museums of modern and contemporary art in the Netherlands

“Art is as essential to our being as economics, religion and philosophy” - Jerry Saltz

The relationship between art, the economy and museums in Western Europe is, and has been, long and interwoven. Each of these fields has gone through a number of structural changes where one has affected the other simultaneously time and time again, causing tensions, negotiations and cross-pollination across disciplines. These tensions and

negotiations, although at times proving difficult, have in the end resulted in innovation and growth in policy, practice and discourse in cultural institutions locally in the Netherlands and worldwide.

The following chapter explores complex relationships with stakeholders, which publicly funded modern and contemporary art museums mediate between. Moreover, how these relationships have added actively to development, but at the same time caused tensions and debate in the assessment of what the museum is and who should it be intended for. For the purpose of limiting the research, cultural events over the past 10 years and more specifically three modern and contemporary art museums in the Netherlands with

municipal collections which include the word ‘stedelijk’ (city) in their title have been analysed and investigated into their role both locally in the Netherlands, and in the wider museological network globally.

Museums of art today are amalgamations of a long and layered history involving social politics, artistic expression and encounter, and entrepreneurial spirit. Together, these

narratives assist the museum in acting as an organism that has grown and developed from sometimes opposing vantages. This creates a dynamic space for the possibility of innovation yet at the same time evokes debate and tensions when it comes to the functionality of the museum environment as any politically driven space has when accommodating for stakeholders with varying interests and ideals.

The museum reflects internally the social changes unfolding outside its doors, and has since its conception. The unique character and power of the contemporary art museum – much like the society in which it reflects – is to prioritise an approach to practice, which reflects on societies states of hybridity, an amalgamation of fragments which all add equally to create a whole, more informed, critical and accommodating picture all at once. This unique power has not always been harnessed in museum practices internally. With links to economic status, it is also important to recognise the museum as a powerfully controlling party with wider image creating capabilities. This places immense pressure on the proceedings in which the museum should function, and at times has created

confusion in internal politics.

The museum therefore has grown to possess the power and pressure to perform as caretaker of public heritage and discourse. But furthermore, with capabilities as participator and driver of the experience-based economy whilst simultaneously as antagoniser in encouraging emancipated choice making in individuals. Museums have long been the holders and exhibiters of historical collections. In order to understand how today’s museum functions in cultivating relationships with its local community, internally and globally, it’s important to look at firstly the evolutionary history of these relationships, and how art and the economy grew to reside on the same side, and additionally, how now what is referred to as the art market has come to contribute to this.

The Great Exhibition of 1851, which exhibited the goods and developments of trade side by side with art, although from an entirely western perspective, remains one of the

primary examples of the intermingling of art and the economy. This exhibition, although 21 a universal attempt to display all world cultures together as a unification, was also a show of industrial progress and an attempt at breaking down hierarchy between classes in

note: Although this remains extremely problematic in the juxtaposing of cultures due to colonialism

21

presenting, vastly different cultures from an entirely western perspective, which encouraged a western way of exhibiting as hierarchically most significant. For the purpose of limiting this research, it is important to be acknowledged, but won’t be elaborated on.

Western Europe. The German architect Gottfried Semper saw this exhibition as a 22 revolutionary phenomenon, and inspired by the emergence of such an exhibition model, outlines the resulting possibilities in his manifesto like article The Ideal Museum: Practical Art in metal and Hard Metals. 23

‘…They must bear the double character of scientific and artistic institutions, or rather they must be selected and disposed with the view of re-uniting what has been

artificially separated and divided in modern times, when modern science began and fulfilled its analysing and critical mission’. 24

Although Semper’s essay is rather definitive and also employs a writing style inherent of enlightenment thinking, a characteristic of the modernist ideal – for example by using the terms ‘Ideal Museum’ – Semper does make a prolific observation and that is the strength in the reunification of the ‘artificially’ separated state of the sciences and the arts. The Great Exhibition provided a new alternative to this and Semper states that this separation between fields is due to science becoming too conclusive and analytical, not allowing room for the openness with which art continued the offer, showing that the reuniting of disciplines would be of great advantage to both fields. Furthermore, Semper uses the 25 term double character, which, it can be argued, is the beginning of a new nature for museums and their agendas for display. This new model operates amongst multiple fields, bringing them together to form an institution which is critically engaged but equally harmonious. Not like the static state which was previously experienced in art collections of the 18th century, but an active environment which paid attention to the ability of the exhibition and art, to propel society forward.

In this way, it can be seen that art and the economy became an intertwined and coherent process together, travelling in parallel and informing each other, yet somehow debate remained consistent, in the importance of supporting cultural institutions in the current

note: The breaking down of hierarchy was through the advertised lowering of ticket prices, to encourage

22

visitors across classes to visit the exhibition and feel welcomed, this was revolutionary for its time as previously exhibitions were specifically reserved for the upwardly mobile and aristocracy, who owned and contributed to the circulation of artworks.

Claudio Leoni, “Art, production and market conditions: Gottfried Semper’s historical perspective on

23

commodities and the role of museums” (2014) 1-2.

Semper, The Idea Museum: Practical Art in Metal and Hard Metals, 1-2.

24

Ibid.

economy. Senior art critic for New York Magazine Jerry Saltz discusses the problem in taking encounters with art for granted during his 2018 lecture, The Contemporary Art World: The Good, The Bad and The Very Bad. Saltz poses the question: what does art do, what is art, what’s art for? Saltz then discusses the use of art, going back to traditional 26 art forms such as cave paintings and hieroglyphics, which had various important

ceremonial functions, but on top of that there was the freedom within art, which Semper also outlines, to be able to progress at a faster rate than other fields. This is through the encouragement for thinking outside the norm, and not having the constraints of

conformity; in other words, constantly remaining freely on the periphery.

Contemporary art enacts this as well; it is simply the way in which societies are

encouraged to encounter and view art which muddies the water in terms of importance, this means also hierarchical associations which have been bred into societies about who is able to interact with and understand art. This has been mainly a western phenomenon, as art as a leisurely aesthetic experience has grown out of the west with the birth of modernity. As long as mankind has existed so has the production of art for many functions and rituals, so why do institutions who support artistic discourse continue to have such a questionable position in our society? This still has to do with the association of art as a privilege for the cultural elite, with art considered to be a luxury, and therefore the buildings which house art, museums, are not seen universally with the same status and importance as other publicly funded institutions when it comes to budget

discussions.

The Netherlands is no different with a considerable drop in funding over the past 10 years. The complicated and fluctuating relationships museums have with their

surrounding communities and the wider network of museums on a more global scale is a multifaceted one in itself, becoming ever more diverse today with a consistent increase in the number of museums worldwide. Moreover, museums increasingly present exhibitions which cover topics that discuss and reveal the complexities in relationships between the economy and globalisation, and how this has had a blanket effect of both positive and negative outcomes. Today as society has adapted to inhabit in what is often referred to as the information age, the new media age and the digital age, transparency in relationships

Jerry Saltz. “ Jerry Saltz on the Contemporary Art world the good the bad and the very bad” lecture Kent

26

becomes more and more critical as individuals discuss and question newly formed demographics in their locality. This can be reflected both in contemporary art and museum practices in the Netherlands.

The impact which these events have on institutions is also often reliant on what kind of relationship the institution has had with governing bodies. Many museums originated from municipal collections maintained as a way of preserving the past; museums of the 20th and an 21st centuries have continuously become more focused on the present and future with collections being exhibited in new ways with supporting media relevant to the times. Even though globalisation has always existed in one way or another, it has become more than ever before, widely broadcasted due to the internet, as societies have moved from an industrial oriented world to a digital and connected one.

Museums have begun to show a trend in exploring their links to globalisation and

connecting those with local issues to try and come to an understanding on this new shift to an information-oriented age.

Kathy Halbreich, Director of the Walker Arts Centre in Minneapolis, America, writes in the introductory text for a project in 2003, How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age:

‘…To be a more locally engaged institution, we need to become more sensitive to the increasingly interconnected world reflected in the demographics of our own

community: a world in which social, political, economic and cultural boundaries are recalculated daily by both ancient and new definitions of home, history and hierarchy. One of our main challenges as an institution is to identify and pose the questions arising from such a shift in our community (and in our profession) in order to better understand the global issues that unite and divide cultures.’ 27

Keeping this in mind, the museum has the possibility more and more of using this societal shift as a transformative opportunity to represent suppressed narratives and alternative engaged trajectories by studying their own locality and reflecting on it globally. To do this, museums as institutions have made changes to become more consistently community oriented, and responding to this change in different and unique ways depending on their own individual contexts.

Kathy Halbreich, “Foreword”, in How Latitudes Become Forms (Minneapolis: Walker Arts Centre, 2002) 4.

1.1 Development of Modern Museums in the Netherlands

Major museums in the Netherlands are rather evenly divided between major cities compared with many other countries in the world. This indicates, as Felicity Bodenstein outlines in her research on national museums in the Netherlands, an example to some degree, of the unification of a country once divided by separate provinces. This coming 28 together of a once subdivided country is an important reason for the differences

experienced throughout the country between provinces and communities. Felicity Bodenstein’s research, however, strictly covers the founding of national museums in the Netherlands, which are more often than not a direct link to the ongoing legacy which was created by the monarchy, especially regarding museums in cities like The Hague. 29

It is widely understood that the development of many museums throughout the world has been, in some way, directly linked to presenting an impression internationally of wealth, innovation and prosperity, reflecting the wishes of the monarchy and aristocracy. It is. however, important to reflect on the development of museums of modern and

contemporary art as having another function as well, one which was brought about with similar intensions but were in fact developed as a result of self-fashioning by the middle-class bourgeoisie operating during the Dutch golden age. 30

In the Netherlands the recorded number of museums released in 2010 was 773 (see fig.1) recorded by CBS (Netherlands national statistics agency) and 547 including pending applications with the National Museum Association (NMV). However, the statistics in the figure also point out that the museums listed which were not always reliant on

bureaucratically registered museums as being 1,254. This information shows that the existence of museums is not always directly linked to official regulations, some seemingly listing themselves due to the fact that they consider themselves to be cultural institutions. In order to become a member of the NMV as an institution you must meet a set of

requirements developed by ICOM (international council of museums), yet the term

Felicity Bodenstein, “National Museums in the Netherlands” Building National Museums in Europe

28

1750-2010, Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (eds.), ( Linköping University, 2011)1.

Ibid.

29

Note: Self fashioning is a term which was developed in the 1980s by historian Stephan Greenblatt and

30

refers to the construction process of one’s identity in the public eye, in order to adhere to rise to socially acceptable status with purposeful and conscious effort.

Stephan Greenblatt, Renaissance Self fashioning: from more to Shakespeare. (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980).

‘museum’ is not protected, which means that the statistics have been somewhat inconclusive as to the precise number of museums which actually exist in the Netherlands.

This information shows the reasons for the development of institutions that occupy the category ‘museum’ is vast and vague. Furthermore, the rate in which the bureaucratic order regulates and keeps up with these new developments is a process. Keeping this in mind, it can be argued that public institutions which house municipal collections that we know today have undergone a slow evolutionary process. This is a world-wide issue, and unlike their private counterparts, which have risen with little adversary and much less social criticality. Ben Mauk employs the help of art critic Hal Foster in describing the problem with the displays of private museum collections: ‘… usually at a remove from urban centres, they are museums of equity display, equal parts prestige and portfolio, and

Fig 1. NMV 2011, statistics report

Note: this report was chosen based on the categorisation of the information which is different in the more recent report. See figure index for a comparison between the two.

they compete for artwork with institutions that are at least semi-public.’ This can be 31 seen, for instance, in the cultivated gardens of the private museum in Wassenaar, Museum Voorlinden, whose display of the collection of industrial tycoon, Joop van Caldenborgh, is more like a display of the art market highlights over the past 30 years. The location of the museum is secluded away from populated areas and its ticketing doesn’t allow free admittance of ICOM card or Museumkaart holders behind its gates, unlike public institutions. 32

The relationship between the government and its support and partnership with museums is not a recent one. Additionally, the synergetic way in which the government and

museums have communicated and assisted one another has functioned rather erratically. Reasons for this concern shifts in societal structures and their effects on cultural

responsibility.

Modernisation has been a main facilitator, resulting in the consequential development of some museums because of a social push against the division between the aristocratic and bourgeoisie classes during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Peter Gay analyses extensively – in the fifth book of his monumental series titled: The Bourgeoisie Experience: Victoria to Freud – the middle-class bourgeoise and its direct relationship to the development of the modern cultural sector in increasingly individual and personalised ways, parallel (and as a continuation) to that of the aristocracy. 33

These developments are particularly important when considering late nineteenth to early twentieth century Amsterdam, where some of the most well-known modern and

contemporary institutions came into being through the supplementation of funds by the middle-class industrialist bourgeoisie. Both the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum were a result of this. As Jan van Adrichem points out, in his introductory text to Stedelijk Reflections: Reflections on the Collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the aristocrats and royals developed their cultural ambitions as a way to protect and portray political power, whereas the middle-class assembled to

Ben Mauk, "The Rise of the Private Art Museum”, New Yorker, May 28, 2015.

31

https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-rise-of-the-private-art-museum.

note: Museumkaart is a national organisation which regulates museum visits with a museum membership

32

for fifty euros per year, members are able to access freely all mainly public museums and collections over the whole country.

Jan van Adrichem, “Introduction” in Stedelijk Reflections: Reflections on the Collection of the Stedelijk

33

provide funds for the organisation and development of a collection for a variety of cultural societies (namely the VVHK in the case of the Stedelijk Amsterdam). The primary

purposes were the creation of new ‘contemporary’ possibilities for arts and culture in Amsterdam, and the protection of heritage and culture for the Netherlands. 34

It has been suggested that on one hand the bourgeoisie did this for their love of the arts and on the other hand, due to their interest in a more modern outlook of the developing city, mixed with what Van Adrichem refers to as an ‘entrepreneurial spirit’.

The main push for this forward projection was a direct consequential response from a change in the constitution by liberal politician Johan Rudolf Thorbecke in 1862. This 35 change brought together a close relationship between the state and the individual,

meaning the encouragement of entrepreneurial endeavours and then a resulting technical, political and economic progress. This act supporting individual endeavours tightened 36 the gap between classes in the name of progress created the beginning of a trickling down effect. Furthermore, it entwined the modern museum with political parties and the economy, as although governments remained decidedly passive in regards to decision making in the arts, the funds developed by the entrepreneurial market began to trickle in to the development of the arts. Moreover, artistic collections began to evolve as a result of the push for societal modernisation. A main stakeholder was now welcomed into the driving of contemporary art and the market, indirectly via the middle-class entrepreneurs, the state.

A major part of this entrepreneurial spirit was the urge for people of the middle-class to work their way up the social ladder, and in doing this meant in some ways the

coincidental development of some of the most widely renowned collections of modern art of today. Although some criticisms of these theories by Peter Gay highlight that Gay didn’t take into consideration ‘…theoretical developments of the discipline regarding gender over the last few years.’ It’s important to note that the Netherlands is a prime 37 example of the way in which the culturally mobile bourgeoisie class were an exception, in

Van Adrichem, “Introduction,” 23.

34

Steven ten Thije, The Emancipated Museum, (Amsterdam: Mondriaan Fonds, 2017) 40.

35

Ibid.

36

Nicole Herz, “The Pleasure Wars (Vol.5 of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud)” in Essays in

37

History, (Virginia: University of Virginia)

terms of the division of power between the genders, as can be seen in the stories of Helene Kröller-Möller (Kröller-Möller Museum) and Sophie Adriana de Bruyn (Stedelijk Amsterdam), who made large contributions of funds and objects to the founding forces behind these two major Dutch collections of modern art.

These stories contribute insight into the industrialist class’ roots which underpin the development of the modern and contemporary art institutions in the Netherlands. These classes were separated from the monarchy and made their fortunes during the Dutch golden age, investing in the development of arts and culture, especially from a more individualised and adventurous perspective.

It is important however, to consider that the funnelling of these funds into the

developments of the collections has also tainted collections to some degree, as the funds generated had a relationship with a period of mass colonisation. This can be seen in the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum collection, as Henri van Abbe, the tobacco entrepreneur, bought a majority of his tobacco from Indonesia during the Dutch invasion period known as the ‘Golden Age’. Transparency is one avenue to attempt at a reconciliation process with these pasts which hang over museums. The Van Abbemuseum has used its current exhibition of the collection The Making of Modern Art, as an opportunity to acknowledge this past to viewers. Although the main narrative threads in the exhibition visit mainly the relationships between the museum’s collection and the international development of modern western art history, during an explanation of desacralisation of objects, Van Abbemuseum also discussed and used as an example the ramifications of the

desacralisation process from a non-western perspective, describing both the transition an object goes through, utilising the example of a Christian sculpture, and also a ritualistic object from a non-western culture. The wall text then is transparent about the use of colonial funds earned by Henri van Abbe’s business in Indonesia, again showing the links of industry even into the present day. (see fig2.)

The funds developed with his tobacco company were then funnelled into developing the collections for the Van Abbemuseum, using his own name. This is of course, as some people speculate, a much more monumental legacy of an empire than a simple portrait, therefore the conception of this museum also shares similar roots to that of the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the difference being the Stedelijk was the creation of a committee

peoples whose names still appear on the walls today. It is also important to consider 38 the fact that, during the 1930s it was quite a common trend to invest in modern art and speculation suggests that Van Abbe had heard that fellow entrepreneur and art collector Van Beunigen was undergoing similar ambitions in Rotterdam. Furthermore, 39

internationally in the United States of America similar trends were occurring again, showing a link between global trends in the economy and the development of modern museums from a business standpoint.

Throughout the twentieth century modern and contemporary art museums developed in the name of progress in order to forge new paths and create status, which although was

Trans. from Dutch: ‘…Een museum is natuurlijk heel wat minder vergankelijk dan een portret of een

38

fabriek’, “Henri van Abbe industrieel en kunstverzamelaar” Brabants Erfgoed. https://

www.brabantserfgoed.nl/personen/a/abbe-henri-van Ibid.

39

Fig.2 Gallery two, “Ritual Ethnology Art”, The Making of Modern Art, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, image courtesy, author.

aimed to some extent towards a certain direction of social and political agency, it was haunted irrefutably by the shadow of shameless self-fashioning and industrial power. The most important thing, however, which was encouraged to eventuate through the rupture of industrialism and modernism, was the allowance for the coming into being of a new structure of museum, which looked to innovation as its striving goal just like that of the new parallel societal aforementioned infrastructure based on ‘entrepreneurial spirit’.

Similarly to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, the Stedelijk museum Schiedam was developed with the intention of cultivating the surrounding city history with a collection donated by Major Gerrit Visser Bastiaansz. This historic collection was donated to the city in 1899, with the intention of a museum being created. This historic intention was upheld until 1950, when it changed course completely under the director Pierre Janssen, and on the recommendation of what Deirdre Carasso, the current director of the museum, refers to as a group of ‘well to do citizens.’ The new collection policy and mission for the museum was contemporary 40 Dutch art, which the museum still prioritises in its exhibitions today. This extreme shift in museum mission and structure can be seen across all three of these museums, who call themselves city museums in the Netherlands, to some degree. It has also been greatly dependent on the social and political relationships which surrounded the museums with ties to the city, and these stakeholders negotiating the terms for the progression of the museum. Sometimes these relationships have also caused great turmoil in the museum, especially the relationship between the museum and its variety of local audience.

Relationships between museums and governments in the Netherlands took another turn in the 1980s when the Association of Dutch Municipalities was appointed the task of investigating the possibilities for reorganisation away from the central government

forming more of an approach towards multiple centres. The findings in the report Care of the Museum were that there needed to be better distribution of responsibilities between authorities. In order to adhere to the move for decentralisation, a categorisation policy was created which revolved around the notion of a collection of ‘national importance.’ This eliminated many museums from national responsibility, the Van Abbemuseum among them. Dos Elshout discusses these governmental redistribution issues as having a strong impact on museums. Basically, the government began to wash their hands of many

Deidre Carasso, email to the author 21/012019.

museums with still very prominent collections, who were often also cultivating

international acclaim. Also, the differentiating between municipalities was so diverse 41 that there was no one fixed strategy, meaning there was no guaranteed participation by the municipality in support. These movements in the redistribution of responsibility, resulted in some museums moving towards a more privatised model which embraced again, similarly to the early twentieth century and their development, privatisation models in order to steady the reliability of funding.

1.2 Modern and Contemporary Art Museums in the Netherlands and their Relationships to Governing Bodies

In the Netherlands, museum practices have had to address issues of prioritisation head on with major cultural budget cuts over the past 10 years. The Netherlands Museum Association (NMV) uses the phrase in its publication from 2011, The Social Significance 42 of Museums, ‘More than Worth It’. This slogan describes the urgency the NMV felt when arguing the national importance of museums to the wider population of the Netherlands. The publication was the result of the annual museums conference which is held in

Middleburg, Zeeland. One poignant question stood out on the 2011 agenda: What was the specific significance of museums for individual cities and provinces of the

Netherlands? The NMV subsequently answered this question through extended research, stating in the end that museums act as ‘…stewards of our public heritage, museums contribute significantly to Dutch society, which justifies their reliance on public funds. Impelled by the current government’s austerity measures and general social changes, museums are looking to form new alliances with the community, in order to find a new balance between private initiative, government and the market.’ The question of the 43 significance of museums in the Netherlands combined with the slogan More than worth it, also outlines the opportunity which museums actively decided to take, reflexively

reassessing their value in the wake of the budget cuts, which were the result of a trickling down effect brought on by the European financial crisis, shows one of the negative

Dos Elshout, The modern museum world in the Netherlands. Social dynamic in policy, heritage, market,

41

scholarship and media.( Amsterdam, 2015) 173-174.

note: For the remainder of this research the National Museums Association will be referred to by its

42

acronym ‘NMV'.

NMV, “More than Worth it”, National Museum Association, 2011, 5.

effects of intertwined nature between museums and the economy, as governments relied on the notion that the cultivation of culture remained a luxury which could not be

afforded. An austere and disloyal measure given past entanglements between museums and governments in the Netherlands like previously mentioned earlier in this chapter.

To this day, the museum as an institution has gone through many vast changes in the wake of modernisation, with ongoing links to globalism and social politics. This has directly affected the complex relationships and tensions experienced by publicly funded museums in the Netherlands with founding stakeholders who were involved in the

modernisation processes of the early twentieth century. These tensions, particularly over the past ten years, have even resulted in the closure and dissolution of some mid-level institutions and along with it trust in ties with governing bodies.

The tensions with the current national government have hindered Dutch museums through the loss of funding, and it’s important to acknowledge the disappearance of some mid-level mediatory institutions during this time of restructure. Ann Demeester, Director of the Frans Hals/ De Hallen museum in Haarlem, commented on this issue in an article for the New York Times, remarking on the loss of these institutions: ‘…it’s not like they cleaned up a diseased part of the cultural sector, they cleaned up a vital part of the sector, which was actually a connecting node. When you attack culture in this way, you actually de-professionalise the sector.’ 44

This loss has caused the elimination of an important step for future generations, resulting in a less stable future for the cultural sector. The main point for these redistribution

measures has been due to a political view from two vantages: first the assumption, due to the rise in number of many private museums, that the museum sector is able and should be able to function independently as an enterprise to drive up the economy, and second, that culture is a luxury which cannot be afforded. The governments that once saw the burgeoning creative sector as an opportunity for the projection of progress, have not turned their backs on an industry which they helped to promote. This is based on links to a shift in national image. At the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the image projection of the Netherlands was one of prosperity and individual growth, which was the perfect breeding ground for the experimental support of the cultural sector. Well into the twentieth century, this continued until a collapse in economic power with the European financial crisis. Something had to be actively done as an example of immediate change to

Nina Siegal, “Dutch Arts Scene is Under Siege” New York Times, January 29, 2013. www.nytimes.com/

44

get people’s trust, therefore the cultural sector was sacrificed for the ‘greater good’. Already with a history of ties with the bourgeoise and therefore elitism, this was a way out of public shame of the government’s miss management; an easy target which already carried a history with private funds and supposed elite culture.

For some more established institutions, these set-backs, although limiting, have meant the development of new strategies in practices. Moreover, these changes have resulted in the creation of new meaning in museums and the revitalisation of hospitality within

museum and governmental relationships to enable newly shaped trajectories. Charles Esche, the current director of the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, comments optimistically on these cuts, describing how, in hindsight, he is even quite grateful for the cuts, even though he wasn’t at the time. “By the end it gave us the possibility to exactly focus on questions of the city, not necessarily the way that it was wanted (intended) but the development of the constituencies program and everything like that came out of that moment.” Esche goes on to describe that before that, the museum had developed a 45 large divide between it and the city, over the years, taking the city of Eindhoven for granted as just another ‘generic factory town constructed by Phillips’. The museum 46 acted more as an island for a long time, looking more to places like Amsterdam and Rotterdam as locations where interesting things were happening, and to the small

community of technology development in Eindhoven, but not more past that. This shake up of governmental funds meant the museum was forced to look at its localisation. The museum remains, unlike a lot of other museums across the country with municipal collections, a part of the municipality.

Although it has been proven that publicly funded institutions have a responsibility to their social surroundings in forming new alliances amongst the local community, this doesn’t mean that the exhibition displays necessarily have to position themselves from a neutral vantage. Esche is much like one of his predecessors, Rudi Fuchs, in stating that the museum should never become neutral, and always remain political. However, Fuchs, who was the museum director between 1975 and 1987, came to the helm bringing with him the philosophy of ‘pure art’. Even though Fuchs is regarded as one of the most influential art historians, art critics and curators of his time – after departing as director from the Van Abbemuseum he went on to be director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam as well – he

Charles Esche, interview,12/12/2018.

45

Ibid.

ran the museum on a singular linear discourse. Considered the opposite to his

predecessor Jean Leering, who prioritised a more expanded function for the museum, stating ‘…it is no longer sufficient for the museum to be a forum for contemporary art, because it should give the visitor the opportunity to become aware of his cultural position in a dynamic society. Therefore this also means: to make the social relevance of art 47 clear, Fuchs, who was more focused on the art as the number one driving force behind the museum, completely disregarding the relationship the museum had to its site

specificity and city. This is an interesting contrast given the power that the city council 48 had over the new director, the choice in which it made to appoint a director who didn’t have the cityscape in mind at all.

Over the past few years, in the wake of the cultural budget cuts, the city council has turned around again, pointing the finger at the museum as an organisation which is haemorrhaging money, after the funnelling down of the austerity measures the entire country was facing. The difference that Esche sees is the ability of the museum to act as both extremes equally: a place of radicalism in art and hospitality to the community. This place of hospitality was grown out of this conflict with the Van Abbemuseum having a historical past which has always primarily been radical. What Esche points out is that this was one of the reasons for the divide between the museum and the community, and through the loss of funding, the museum, which is after all a laboratory of creativity, was able to call once again on that ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ and create space for a democracy between both polemics.

In actuality, with the reassessment of the definition of the institution that has occurred has resulted in a strengthening effect for the more established museums, which perform within a plurality of narratives, meaning that opposing or polarised discourses can be encouraged to exist in dialogue with one another under the same roof. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has simply shifted in priority from previous times in which the

museum exhibited aesthetically opposing art works in dialogue with one another in the same space, or prioritising the mixing with society, but never being host to two ideologies at the same time. The shift now is not only opposing dialogues in medium but also in the

“1964-1967– Jean Leering,” Van Abbemuseum website, https://vanabbemuseum.nl/over-het-museum/

47

gebouw-en-historie/1964-1973-jean-leering/.

“1975-1987– Rudi Fuchs,” Van Abbemuseum website, https://vanabbemuseum.nl/over-het-museum/

48

negotiating of various social dynamics, philosophies and dialogues as well. For the Van Abbemuseum this also allows the museum to be both tied to the city council as a supporting part, but act as an autonomous institution by itself at the same time.

The museum has opened its doors to provide space for this, yet there remains certain aspects of miscommunication between governmental bodies and the museum. Especially in the responsibility taken for the museum and how it functions, which is still largely tied to the image of the city, and more than that, to the nation itself. This can be seen in the changes and tensions faced historically and more recently in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has faced a large turnover in directorship throughout its existence. Many from the past twenty years were only

appointed for a short term. Most recently, in 2017, the museum has seen the departure of

director Beatrix Ruf. Although Ruf was appointed under the pretence that she had a vast network and understanding of the wider art market, this was in part also one of the reasons for her untimely departure. Two articles written a year apart in the newspaper De Groene Amsterdammer, by journalist Roos van der Lint, form an overview of events which took place during this time, discussing this curious and extremely public exit of Ruf. Van der Lint uses an image of a work which is part of the collection at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam by Roy Lichtenstein titled, As I Opened Fire, from 1964 (see fig 3.) which describes in a pictorial nutshell the systematic set of events which occurred ending in the resignation of Beatrix Ruf. This artwork describes the event of an ally being used as a

Fig 3. Roy Lichtenstein, As I Open Fire, 1964

© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, c/o Picto right Amsterdam. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam via De Groene Amsterdammer