IN PERSPECTIVE 17: BEFORE Amersfoort was by the sea (Is it better for a municipality to stop embarking on large-scale new construction or renovation projects of art institutions?).

Still Amersfoort by the Sea is not a reality. Sea level rise is taking a little longer to materialise. In the meantime, then, the city is still just centrally located in the country, with the largest national hub for train traffic, an average population profile, a historic city centre, a unique training programme for carillonneurs, as well as the 'music factory' in the Veerensmederij and the art hall KAdE, which scores well in reviews.

A city of this size (the 16th largest municipality in the country with 160,000 inhabitants) soon struggles with cultural policy commitments, ambitions and actual possibilities. In the 1980s - the period of dynamic alderman Fons Asselbergs - Amersfoort combined extremely careful management of its monumental cityscape with progressive urban expansion, such as the Kattenbroek district. That perpetuating cultural policy lines is not always easy for such a municipality shows the short existence of the visual arts centre De Zonnehof and the Armando Museum.

The Zonnehof

Amersfoort had an active Amersfoort Cultural Council (ACR), with committed, enthusiastic members working within it with a small team of professionals. The ACR passed statutory1 at De Zonnehof, housed in the Rietveld Pavilion on Zonnehofplein. For those familiar with Rietveld's pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1954), the art gallery De Zonnehof (1959) is very recognisable.

Rietveld designed a spacious art hall on Zonnehofplein, which, however, had to be immediately downsized due to costs. This broke down the management from the start in terms of operation and programming. The centre for visual arts De Zonnehof offered a small art hall with changing exhibitions, operated an art loan, maintained an architecture centre, supervised commissions for visual arts in public spaces and advised the municipality on visual arts. So the space of the Zonnehof itself was not that big, but the exhibitions there were given their own and atmospheric context,

I read back the board reports of The Sun Court from the period2 in which I was on the board, and then a few recurring themes stand out. They will be familiar to many local cultural institutions:

1. Too many tasks (or too many ambitions) for too little manpower or too few people for too many tasks;
2. Inadequate housing;
3. Criticism from the municipality: activities are not sufficiently approachable for 'ordinary' residents;
4. Ambitious municipal plans for urban development that include the institution.

This was what most of the agenda items were about, Plus of course: budgets and annual figures, preparation or conclusion of talks with the councillor and personnel issues.

Small-scale

The core activities themselves came up relatively little and with little depth. They just happened. There was an active architecture centre - led by the current director of the museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen, Hedwig Saam - that could tie in its programme with major Amersfoort building activities. For example, it organised the urban architecture prize, a project private ownership and an art and architecture walking trail.

Another department had its hands full with art commissions in the city. Examples from the year 2000: the 'Argentum Bench' by Nicolaas Dings, Gijs Brouwer's Ontmoetingsbank in the Annie Brouwer Plantsoen and the art applications by Titus Nolte and Toine Horvers in Calveen business park. The art hall showed exhibitions with national reach and appreciation, such as by Eugene Brands, Klaas Gubbels, Auke de Vries and Henk Visch or the international exhibition the Beauty of Evil.

The art loan operated on a small scale, but to apparent satisfaction. What the identity of De Zonnehof should be and what it should mean for the city was also sometimes the subject of piling sessions and meeting agendas. The local visual arts temple, a mainly nomadic activist, a service organisation: how did De Zonnehof look in the mirror?

There was one other agenda item that received a lot of attention: the Armando Museum.

Armando Museum

The (first and only) director of De Zonnehof Paul Coumans knew -of course- Amersfoort's famous son, artist Armando. The latter was getting to an age when he needed to think about the future of his paintings. Together they discussed the possibility of the municipality of Amersfoort buying part of Armando's collection and Armando donating another part to Amersfoort on perpetual loan.

The idea of an Armando Museum appeared to appeal to the municipality. Talks and negotiations took place with the artist and his business-minded wife in Armando's then hometown of Berlin. An Armando Foundation was set up, governed by several connoisseurs and collectors, including Martijn Sanders and Theo Bremer. The foundation would act as the formal owner of the work on loan to the municipality, and the board was also advisory and stimulating in the background.

Elbow Church

Amersfoort purchased 21 works and accepted the loan of over 200 works. The municipality and the Armando Foundation each gave the collection on loan to De Zonnehof, which would operate the future museum. Amersfoort also arranged for the transformation of the Elleboogkerk on Langegracht into a small museum dedicated to Armando. On 8 December 1998, Queen Beatrix opened the museum, a compact exhibition hall with space for many works anyway and a usable small upper floor. The Armando museum existed under that name for 20 years, eight of which at the same location, a total of some 15 years in Amersfoort and another four in Utrecht.

A special story is that of the first technical manager of the Armando museum. This Henk Panjer had been an exceptional applicant. The warehouse manager of a strawboard factory in northern Groningen was unfamiliar with art, but by a curious coincidence he ended up in Armando's Berlin studio. His art touched him instantly and it clicked with the artist. Since then, he collected all publications and photos of Armando's work as well as other material he came across.

So he seemed perfect for the job, but the transition from the Groningen factory to the quiet little church in Amersfoort turned out to be quite big, so it did not become a long-term employment. For me, he has always remained the example of how to be completely immersed in art without any prior knowledge.

After the fire

During roof work in October 2007, the Elleboog Church caught fire. Much of the building as well as the artworks were destroyed or severely damaged. The museum then led a nomadic existence in Amersfoort for several years. Subsequently, the municipality proved unable to get its hands together and the money in its portfolio to continue the Armando Museum. With this, the municipality was unable to meet the conditions that the collection would remain well preserved and accessible to the public in the long term.

The Centraal Museum in Utrecht did see exploitation possibilities, took over the remaining collection and set up a new Armando museum in Landhuis Oud-Amelisweerd. In March 2014, Queen Beatrix once again came to host the opening. But discord arose between the museum and the artist. The latter withdrew his work after which the museum went bankrupt in 2018.

Amersfoort in C

The CBK De Zonnehof had already been disbanded by then. After the directors of Museum Flehite and De Zonnehof took a tentative step towards cooperation, not much happened. In 2003, however, the municipality forced a merger and all Amersfoort museums merged under the banner of 'Amersfoort in C'.

Paul Coumans' position fell. The tasks of De Zonnehof were divided among several institutions. The art hall Coumans had dreamed of came into being a few years later: KAdE, first in a new building on Smallepad, later in the Eemkwartier.

Thriller

Anyone wishing to learn in detail about the history of Armando Museum, art gallery KAdE and the other local museums should "Twice a False Start" by Miro Lucassen. Tasty, but also seriously and detailed narrated; it reads like a thriller. (still for sale)

The incredible additional cost of the late insertion of art gallery KAdE in the Eemkwartier brought down the alderman for culture and the municipal secretary in 2011. On the site of De Zonnehof came temporarily, until its relocation to Utrecht in 2014, the Armando Museum, The last in-house activity of CBK De Zonnehof was a tribute to Gerrit Rietveld.

Architectenweb: "After a period of almost fifty years of exhibitions, debates, lectures and many other activities in the field of modern art and architecture, the departure of The Zonnehof from its special exhibition pavilion. The curtain falls in summer 2008."3 And: "De Zonnehof honours its pavilion with an exhibition in the form of a triptych: a focus on Gerrit Rietveld, the pavilion's architect, a look at the exhibition history and a contemporary response to the pavilion by visual artist Oscar Lourens. "

You wonder

At least three questions come to mind when I reflect on the De Zonnehof/ Kunsthal KAdE case study and the Armando museum experience.

1. Is it better for a municipality to stop embarking on large-scale new construction or renovation projects of art institutions? Amersfoort's Eemkwartier, Rotterdam's Boijmans Van Beuningen and The Hague's Amare are on a long list of out-of-control cultural buildings. Nevertheless, I hope that municipalities do not shy away from major work, whether to serve urban development, urban promotion or art consumption. But the burdens of new construction or renovation should not fall on the institution. If it does, accidents soon happen. Furthermore, these are almost always unique projects for which the municipality itself has too little expertise, but experience shows that external experts are often insufficiently all-round for them. So there needs to be a rock-solid construction team, to avoid political surprises, firmly anchored in the political administration. And another thing: it is true that much would not have come about if the most realistic rather than optimistic forecasts had been issued beforehand. But showing optimism and reassuring the city council only to report major setbacks afterwards can cause lasting damage to political trust and cultural ambition.

2. Is an art hall outside the four major cities feasible at all? It seems to me that an art hall is mainly attractive to out-of-town visitors who come specifically for an exhibition or include it in their day out. There is nothing wrong with that. It makes the city attractive to tourists. But residents themselves are best served by a broad and accessible centre for visual art, art lending, exhibitions, courses, attention to architecture and photography, explanation of visual art in public spaces and so on. However, public outreach and public attraction in the visual arts usually score relatively low within municipal arts policy, relative to the performing arts and to the building as a business card.

3. Is an artists' museum even exploitable? (Leaving aside museums for international crowd-pleasers like the Van Gogh Museum and Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam and Villa Mondrian in Winterswijk) The unsuccessful pursuit of a Jan Wolkers museum, a Jan Cremers museum or Armando museum does not encourage similar initiatives. You could, of course, contrast that with the Anton Pieck Museum in Hattem, the Jopie Huisman Museum in Dokkum or the Marius van Dokkum Museum in Harderwijk. But then again, these are non-canonical national public stoppers and there, too, it remains to be seen how long public devotion will last.

A pavilion museum or a sleigh ride

I have occasionally dreamt - and I am now sharing this dream publicly - of one or more museums with a pavilion-like structure (building type: Groninger museum). These semi-independent pavilions would house artists of the calibre of Armando. Here you could combine the operation, marketing, commerce, restaurant, storage, management of these artists' museums.

With a large number of artists' rooms in addition, you can offer other prominent artists a solution to the issue of what to do with the remaining oeuvre at the end of their lives. If all rights are transferred in such an institute, this eases the communal exploitation. It certainly doesn't seem out of the question for the heirs to want to contribute once or structurally themselves.

Rich entrepreneur

Such a pavilion museum is out of the question for a medium-sized municipality, unless a wealthy entrepreneur wants to realise his patronage dream there of all places. On the other hand, other efforts in the visual arts can be of great benefit to the municipality. Cultural activity during the day, a livelier artistic climate, starting points for cultural education, projects for cohesion and integration, a more attractive city centre, a bonus for shoppers and tourists.

It is searching for the right size, strengthening what is already present in the core, and slowly building and perpetuating rather than constantly giving new temporary impulses. Perhaps working mainly from existing facilities or combined institutions. A centre for visual arts does not necessarily have to have the character of a distinguished art temple. It can also be a 'drag cabin', a nomadic facility that can call on different neighbourhoods and districts.

That was also one of the options in the discussions I was allowed to lead at De Zonnehof. At a time when Amersfoort was far from being by the sea.

Footnotes