Chairman of Amsterdam Arts Council steps down early.

Gerard de Kleijn, chairman of the Amsterdam Arts Council since 2010, will not complete his second term, which was due to end in 2018. Today, he announced his departure from 1 January 2016. That is two years earlier than intended. It has to do with the Amsterdam City Council's choice for a new system of cultural subsidies, in which the role of the independent Arts Council is much smaller.

'I was reappointed (in 2014), and I agreed to that reappointment with different expectations than is now the reality. The Arts Council is also going international and will have less to do with the small initiatives, say small and medium-sized enterprises in the arts. In recent years, I have fought hard to ensure that these were not snowed under by the cuts. If that is now going in a different direction, it is good that there will also be a new person who can live up to that credibly.'

No protest signal

That looks like a protest signal. According to de Kleijn, we should not see it that way: 'Then I would have done it at a different time, as early as six months ago. I am really still trying to make the transition to the new system as smooth as possible, so that the field is not affected. It is common knowledge that I am not in favour of this system change.

This has less to do with the position of the Amsterdam Arts Council and more to do with the policy direction chosen by the city council. We advised against going down that road: "Mind your business!" "No division!". All those arguments passed, the city council did not go along with them. It's just a system change, so we don't have to be very dramatic about it either.'

De Kleijn is still hard at work on a new opinion on basic local cultural infrastructure, due out in October. 'It's the natural time, when the world goes in a different direction, to put another one on the head as well.'

De Kleijn, for whom this was a job of honour, can now throw himself back fully into his real work: being director of MuseumGouda. A major exhibition entitled: "I don't give way to anyone."