On paper, supervision in the cultural sector is exemplary, but in practice the system appears to derail precisely where power no longer meets countervailing power.
Introduction - supervision without countervailing power
On paper, supervision in the cultural sector is carefully and even exemplary. There is a Governance Code for Culture, there are supervisory boards with independent members, there are subsidy providers that require compliance with that code and there are annual reports in which management and supervision render account. Those who measure the sector solely by this formal yardstick might conclude that supervision is mature and professional. This is a misconception.
The problems in cultural supervision are not the result of a lack of rules, but of a structural imbalance between power and counterpower. This imbalance is reinforced by juridification, informal networks and role confusion, but especially by the lack of structural transparency towards the outside world. In a publicly funded sector, this not only makes supervision vulnerable internally, but also makes it lose its social legitimacy.
In recent years, the same patterns have recurred with alarming regularity: abruptly dismissed directors, breaches of trust that largely take place behind closed doors, rapid legalisation of conflicts and public disruption that only becomes visible when reputational damage has already been done. These are no longer isolated incidents, but signals of a system that is vulnerable in practice.
Therefore, the central question that arises is not whether supervision sometimes fails, but whether the current supervision model in the cultural sector is fundamentally out of balance. Recent case histories, including Internationaal Theater Amsterdam and the Nederlands Fotomuseum, show how supervision functions under social, political and media pressure.
Leading the way is Sjarel Ex and Jaap van Manen's research, presented in January at the Nieuwe Kerk, and what they found in a broader context of legislation, governance codes and behavioural dynamics. They note the consequences of the Management and Supervision of Legal Entities Act, how groupthink and co-optation work, how vulnerable the position of directors is, what happens when a corrective mechanism for failing supervision is lacking, and the tension between control and artistic freedom.
Ultimately, the question is who corrects the corrector, and what is needed to rebalance supervision in the cultural sector: not through more rules, but through stronger countervailing power, external reflection, more transparency and a reappraisal of supervision as a guardian of public and artistic value.
Mischief in the New Church
Ex and Van Manen's report took centre stage on 16 January at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, where former museum director Sjarel Ex and emeritus professor of corporate governance Jaap van Manen presented their report “The treachery of supervision”. More than 100 directors, supervisors and others involved in the sector had gathered for the discourse.
Ex and Van Manen's report is based on intensive interviews with directors of around ten museums and performing arts institutions, supplemented by discussions with two groups of supervisors. In addition, the authors draw on their own long-term experience in museum practice and corporate governance, respectively.
This combination of empirical interviews and experiential knowledge - what they themselves call ‘vorwissenschaftliches Wissen’ - makes the study recognisable and confrontational at the same time. It is emphatically a white paper: not a conclusive theory, but a first systematic exploration of a problem that has been dismissed as incidental for too long.
The meeting was neither a tribunal nor a reckoning, but an uneasy collective self-examination. Directors, supervisors, policymakers and advisers listened to analyses that many recognised but had rarely heard so explicitly expressed.
“We had a feeling: thunder in the front,” Ex said, “and that feeling unfortunately proved to be justified.”
The meeting acted as a rare moment of public reflection on a system that is usually mostly discussed indoors.
From incident to pattern
“Four in 10 directors face a serious, unbridgeable conflict with the supervisory board in their career.” - Sjarel Ex
What is often presented as a series of isolated incidents in the cultural sector turns out, on closer inspection, to be a recurring pattern. The Amsterdam International Theatre and the Dutch Photo Museum are the recent, publicly visible examples.
Not because the cases are identical in substance, but because both cases reveal similar managerial dynamics: internal signals, social and media pressure, and supervision that escalates rather than stabilises under those pressures.
At ITA, the departure of the artistic director was presented as a necessary response to accusations of transgressive behaviour in a changing social context. In the public perception, attention quickly shifted from institutional responsibility to moral condemnation. The supervisory board operated in a force field of reputational risk, political sensitivity and social outrage. The pressure to act quickly and visibly was intense; silence was quickly interpreted as unwillingness or impotence.
Instead of bringing calm and proportionality, oversight became part of the escalation. Legal certainty took precedence over administrative due diligence, resulting in long-term reputational damage for all concerned. The entire Supervisory Board stepped down.
The Nederlands Fotomuseum shows a related but substantially different coloured pattern. Here, there was no formal report, but a ‘signal’ about the quality of information provided to the supervisory board. The board investigated this signal itself and, within weeks, decided to dismiss the director. Suspension followed already the day after the signal, with a member of the supervisory board temporarily assuming the role of director.
The council was publicly silent, except for limited information to councillor and grant makers, after which media and public opinion filled the resulting vacuum. Anonymous sources and fragmentary information took on a life of their own, and the seriousness of the situation became increasingly heavy-handed.
Later, the Journalism Council ruled that parts of the reporting based on anonymous sources were ‘biased’ and ‘unverifiable’. This dropped an important part of the public accusations. However, that correction came only after administrative decisions had already been made and reputational damage had set in for the director.
The case reveals how supervisory actions under media pressure can be irreversible, even when the factual basis is subsequently found to be unsound. Neither the Council, nor individual members, resigned.
Although ITA and the Nederlands Fotomuseum are often mentioned in the same breath in the public debate, the differences between the two cases are considerable. At ITA, two external investigations preceded the severing of the relationship with the director, the accusations involved physical and psychological violence and ultimately the entire supervisory board resigned. At the Nederlands Fotomuseum, the case involved signals, a different procedure and a different attitude of supervision.
These very differences underline that the problem is not in the nature of one case, but in the way supervision functions under pressure. One board, in self-reflection, knew its own shortcomings and stepped down; the other merely reproached the former board member and stayed put.
In both cases, not only the content of the signals played a role, but especially the context in which supervision had to act. The speed at which narratives form leaves little room for considered decision-making. Every action - or lack thereof - is immediately publicly interpreted. This increases the tendency to act from legal cover rather than institutional wisdom - and also behind closed doors.
However, that speed should not be an excuse for abandoning due diligence or transparency. On the contrary: precisely in situations of social pressure and media interest, this is a core task for supervision. A supervisory board can be expected to keep a cool head, organise a hearing and act in a way that always leaves a way back.
Decisiveness without diligence and openness not infrequently leads to irreparable damage - to managers and supervisors, institutions and their public legitimacy.These examples do not serve to reassess individual decisions in retrospect, but to make recurrent supervisory dynamics visible. They point to a system that relies heavily on judicial power, has light counter-power and offers too few institutional safeguards for reflection, proportionality, transparency and redress.
Therein lies precisely the structural fragility of the current supervision model in the cultural sector.
Transparency as an administrative duty
In both cases, not only was decision-making problematic, but also the absence of a clear explanation to the outside world. Supervisory boards opted for silence, legal cover or minimal communication towards grant providers. This created a vacuum in which media, anonymous sources and speculation determined the narrative.
Transparency is often seen as risky in the cultural sector: as something that can undermine legal position or peace of mind. But just the opposite is true. In a publicly funded system, explanation is not a favour, but a core task. Transparency - about process, trade-offs and uncertainties - acts as a form of counter-power: it limits power, delays escalation and protects both institutions and individuals from reputational damage that cannot be repaired afterwards.
A sector of ideals, power and vulnerability
The cultural sector is significantly larger economically and socially than is often thought. Stages and museums together attract about 47 million visits a year, account for hundreds of thousands of labour years and contribute billions to the gross domestic product.
At the same time, the field consists of hundreds of relatively small organisations: foundations and associations with several dozen employees, heavily dependent on public funding and with a distinctly idealistic and artistic character and a multitude of diversity. These institutions do not produce tangible or normative outputs and goods, but intangible value: meaning, imagination, reflection and social cohesion.It is precisely this combination that makes governance in the cultural sector exceptionally complex.
Organisations are fragile, reputation-sensitive and run on trust and personal chemistry. A single negative publication, conflict at the top or political pressure can directly threaten an institution's survival. At the same time, they are legally set up according to a model directly derived from listed companies.
Van Manen explicitly pointed this out at the meeting: “We have equipped SME organisations with a supervisory model designed for listed companies. That falters.”
The Management and Supervision of Legal Entities Act (WBTR), which came into force in 2021, has further increased that tension. The law was supposed to prevent maladministration and better monitor directors, but has emphatically placed the centre of power in many organisations with the supervisory board. Ex formulated it more sharply: “Because of this change in the law, supervisors in foundations have become supreme.” For this, acclaim followed from the audience
Moreover, foundations, the most common legal model used in the cultural sector, lack an external line of accountability: supervisors there are effectively accountable only to themselves.
Behaviour, group dynamics and the failure of self-correction
“I come from the business world, and frankly, I often find companies more transparent than the cultural sector. Boards and councils here mostly look at each other.” Indicated a speaker from the audience.
Those who approach the surveillance problem exclusively from a legal perspective overlook an important part of reality. Many derailments are not caused by ill will, but by patterns of behaviour that are almost inevitable in small, close-knit networks. The Council for Culture speaks in this context of ‘behavioural governance’: the way human behaviour, group dynamics and informal power relations influence decision-making.
In supervisory boards of cultural institutions, phenomena such as groupthink, conflict avoidance and loyalty to individuals often play a bigger role than people want to acknowledge. Supervisors usually come from similar networks, share a cultural background and also meet outside the institution. Critical questions are then quickly perceived as personal or disruptive. Especially when the chairman is dominant, the internal debate narrows.
The Governance Code for Culture explicitly recommends that supervisory boards be evaluated externally at least once every three years. In practice, this is far from always happening. When evaluations already take place, they are often organised internally and limited to atmosphere, commitment and mutual relationships. Precisely questions about use of power, role perception and decision-making under pressure remain out of the picture.
Thereby, an essential corrective mechanism is missing. Not because supervisors are in bad faith, but because the system relies on self-reflection without external incentive or obligation. Several speakers said they recognised this picture.
A structurally reinforcing factor in this inward-looking dynamic is co-optation. Supervisory boards usually supplement themselves from existing professional and social networks, often through a small network of intermediary agencies. This seems efficient and familiar, but has the side effect of increasing homogeneity and eliminating divergent perspectives. New members are selected on ‘fitting into the team’ rather than the ability to dissent and/or come from the agencies‘ ’card box'.
This does not reduce the risk of groupthink, but rather institutionalises it. In such a context, supervision narrows to confirmation of one's own rightness, while formal independence appears intact.
It is also striking how marginal the voice of staff is often involved. While it is precisely staff and works councils that see early on where things are chafing, their role in governance issues remains limited. This is a missed sensor in an already fragile system:
“The works council is mentioned, but too marginally. While staff in particular see where things get derailed. We miss that in the story.”
Rolling resistance under structural pressure
“If a supervisor says: if you can't solve it, I will,” Ex said, “then the role stability is gone.”
Role clarity is not a formality but a prerequisite for trust and legitimacy. A core problem in the governance of cultural institutions is role confusion. The Governance Code for Culture prescribes that the supervisory board fulfils three roles: supervisor, employer and sounding board. In calm times, this can go together. But as soon as the pressure increases, this role combination turns out to be fragile and sometimes even destructive.
Many conflicts arise in appointments and reappointments of directors. Profile sketches are vague or ignored, expectations are insufficiently expressed and evaluations remain implicit. The free sounding board imperceptibly turns into an assessment interview. And when external pressure increases - political interference, media attention, internal reports or financial setbacks - the supervisory board increasingly shifts to the director's seat.
That moment often marks the beginning of a breach of trust that is hardly recoverable. Instead of counter-power, administrative supremacy arises, and instead of dialogue, escalation follows.
Escalation as a recurring pattern
What is striking in Ex and Van Manen's study is how predictable many escalations turn out to be. According to their estimate, four in ten directors in the cultural sector face a serious, unbridgeable conflict with the supervisory board during their career. Every year, they estimate, around five per cent of institutions experience acute administrative unrest. These are figures that indicate a structural problem, not incidents.
Most of these conflicts do not make it to the media. They disappear through settlement agreements, secrecy and silent exits.
“A huge amount of damage is done,” Van Manen said, “both personally and institutionally, but it often remains invisible.”
This invisibility feeds the illusion that the system works, while under the surface patterns of abuse of power, fear and conflict avoidance persist.This is precisely where the Governance Code for Culture falls short. The code offers few concrete action perspectives for situations where trust has disappeared.
“The moment you get into that dark zone of loss of confidence,” Ex said, “nobody really knows what to do with it anymore.”
The result is improvisation, legalisation and reputational damage, with legal correctness replacing moral and managerial leadership. The audience endorsed that there is no level playing field in the top structure and that this needs to be addressed.
The professionalisation paradox of supervision
An underexposed aspect in the debate on supervision is the degree of professionalisation. Despite the fact that the director is the one who makes the decisions and runs the organisation, supervisors in the cultural sector also bear responsibilities. They can be held legally liable in case of demonstrable negligence, decide on the appointment and dismissal of directors and operate in an environment of high public and political sensitivity. At the same time, supervision in culture is often still seen as voluntary work, something one ‘does on the side’, unpaid and without structural training.
This tension leads to a paradox. Supervisors are expected to act professionally, make complex trade-offs and resist pressure from outside and inside. But the preconditions for doing so well are often lacking. Training is not compulsory, time investment is underestimated and remuneration is limited or non-existent.In sectors where large umbrella organisations have been formed such as healthcare and education, supervision has become more professionalised in recent years.
In the cultural sector, an archipelago of mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, staying close to the ball is a useful remedy, but for a Supervisory Board, what goes on stage or in theatres remains virtually non-judgmental in terms of content. That makes it harder to name and correct supervisory failures.
The complicating factor is the scale of many cultural organisations also emerged from the room:
“The majority of cultural institutions are small. There, this supervision model is often simply not feasible as it is currently set up.”
Who controls the corrector?
One of the most pregnant questions from the room came from a director:
“Who actually controls the supervisory board?”
The answer remained unsatisfactory. In theory, there is self-evaluation. In practice, there is no structural corrective mechanism. There is no inspection, no independent review and hardly any layer to which directors can turn when supervision is dysfunctional. Also, in the case of foundations, there is no accountability to third parties, other than a short piece in the annual report.
Remarkably, in this system, the director is especially structurally vulnerable. Since the introduction of the Management and Supervision of Legal Entities Act (WBTR) in 2021, a supervisory board can suspend or dismiss a director without a prior hearing. Whereas employees in many organisations have confidants, hotlines and anonymous routes at their disposal, the director has no internal place to safely address signals of dysfunctional supervision.Correction can only take place retrospectively through the courts, a lengthy, costly and personally arduous process that many eventually abandon. The formal balance of power is unequally anchored legally and financially.
The director concerned will have to fund the legal action himself, a Board of Supervisors will do it at the institution's expense.
“If a director performs badly, he or she is kicked out. If a supervisory board performs badly, nothing usually happens.” - from the audience.
This asymmetry creates a paradoxical risk. Directors are expected to take responsibility, be transparent and discuss mistakes, but do so in a context where openness can directly undermine their position. The threat of immediate suspension or dismissal means that tensions are masked rather than discussed. This undermines precisely the learning ability and open culture that supervision should foster.
Conversely, directors often see dysfunctional supervision but rarely dare to put it on the agenda.
“Directors often see dysfunctional supervision but rarely dare to put it on the agenda. The balance of power is simply not equal.” - Jaap van Manen
After all, the balance of power is asymmetrical: the council is the employer and can take far-reaching decisions without external review. This creates a closed circuit in which mistakes can accumulate, while no one is held formally accountable.
“The first person who can judge whether a Supervisory Board is functioning well is the Supervisory Board itself. And that is exactly the problem.” - Jaap van Manen
An additional strong insight came from the audience: “What is missing is that third supervisor. And that is actually the public. I have never experienced a cultural institution holding an annual meeting and inviting the public to watch.”
Without active transparency towards the public, that third regulator remains abstract. Annual reports, brief press statements or confidential information to grant makers do not suffice. Transparency here means: timely, understandable explanations of processes, role views and trade-offs made - precisely when things get rough.
Artistic freedom under administrative pressure
Beneath the technical discussions on supervision lay a more fundamental tension: cultural institutions exist by the grace of artistic freedom. That freedom is assumed but hardly explicitly protected. The Governance Code for Culture contains extensive provisions on integrity, finance and supervision, but is largely silent on the protection and encouragement of the artistic core.
In its recently published advisory report “Maken (z)onder druk” (Making (z)under pressure), the Council for Culture explicitly places artistic freedom alongside press freedom and academic freedom. Art and culture are part of democratic civil society. Supervision that focuses exclusively on control and risk minimisation undermines that space. Self-censorship thus becomes a governance issue.
“The freedom of programming is not in the code. And that's not a detail.” - Sjarel Ex
Oversight and democratic institutions
In doing so, supervision in the cultural sector touches on a broader question: “How do semi-public institutions function in a democratic constitutional state?” Like journalism and science, culture operates in a tension between autonomy and public accountability. In journalism, the separation of editing and publishing is a hard-won principle; in science, there are review committees and a strongly entrenched idea of academic freedom. The cultural sector lacks a similar institutional counterbalance.
The ambivalent role of government and funds
“The grant maker does not have to interfere with the content, but can make requirements on how supervision is set up.” - input from the audience.
The role of government and funds is ambivalent in all this. They demand compliance with the Culture Governance Code, but operate outside that framework themselves. Political interventions and unclear signals reinforce uncertainty in the field. At the same time, there is no clear sanctions framework for failing supervision. The result is administrative paralysis. Ex and Van Manen therefore argued for the government role and bandwidth within which the government functions to be included in that code.
An intervening official warned at the meeting that subsidising authorities should keep their distance from artistic content. After all, political influence is always lurking here. According to him, it is up to the government to set frameworks and subsidy amounts; it is then up to the institution itself to determine to what extent it can and wants to meet those conditions. That consideration, he argued, should ultimately determine the amount of the grant awarded.
A system out of balance
Is supervision in the cultural sector fundamentally flawed? The answer is less straightforward than the question suggests. The system is not broken, but it is out of balance. It combines heavy legal powers and opportunity for waiving transparency by the supervisor with light counter-power and director vulnerability. Moreover, the model is built on self-regulation where concentration of power calls precisely for transparency and external correction.
Without real countervailing power, supervision does not become a guardian of public value, but a risk in itself.
Ex and Van Manen present neither a blueprint nor a quick fix. Their report is emphatically a ‘work in progress’: an invitation to the industry to deepen and broaden the conversation. The question is who takes up that invitation - directors, regulators, funds, politics - or no one.
In any case, they themselves are going further, strengthened by the reactions to their initial findings and the meeting in the New Church. Their follow-up will focus on improving the Culture Governance Code. They also want to review laws and regulations for cultural institutions, with the aim of restoring the level playing field between governance and supervision. They also aim to develop sample profiles for supervisory board members, and the chairman in particular, to define expectations, roles and responsibilities more sharply.
They further advocate the establishment of an independent dispute house where conflicts can be addressed at an early stage. Finally, they suggest introducing review committees at municipal cultural institutions so that periodic, external reflection becomes a regular part of the system.
The NVTC will discuss with the sector and with Cultuur+Ondernemen the Governance Code for Culture and how to revise it. No doubt, the valuable input of the Ex and Van Manen report will find its way into this.
Revising the code is not a technical exercise, but a principled one. Culture fulfils an indispensable role in a society under pressure. Artists and institutions provide space for imagination, contradiction and doubt - exactly what is scarce in polarised times.
That space requires supervision that does not stifle, but protects. That does not escalate, but stabilises. And that not only organises power, but also limits it. The reports, opinions and the session in the New Church show that awareness of this is growing. Whether that awareness translates into different behaviour and better supervision will have to be seen in the coming years.But above all, let us not forget what one visitor brought to the evening:
“We can make a thousand rules. But if nobody reads them or complies with them, the paper will remain.”
Reports and publications consulted
- Sjarel Ex & Jaap van Manen - The treachery of supervision. Governance in the cultural sector (2025)
- Culture Council - Supervision in the cultural sector: an art in itself (2023)
- Council for Culture - Making (s)under pressure. Artistic freedom as a democratic foundation (2025)
- Verwey-Jonker Institute / Kunsten ’92 - A resilient cultural sector in times of polarisation (2026)
- Culture+Enterprise - Culture Governance Code (2006, revised 2019)
- Ministry of Justice and Security - Administration and Supervision of Legal Persons Act (WBTR) (entered into force 2021)
Journalistic articles and case histories
NRC: ‘Abuses in the cultural sector: “Directors must stand up and say: guys, the thunder must end”’ Interview with Sjarel Ex and Jaap van Manen on structural problems in supervision and governance (January 2026).
Press Council: Ruling on coverage of the Dutch Photo Museum (2025) Judgment on journalistic diligence around anonymous sources and administrative conflicts.
de Volkskrant: Article series on the Nederlands Fotomuseum and Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (2024-2025) Investigative journalistic reporting on governance conflicts and supervision in cultural institutions.
Context and comparative perspective
Boekman Foundation: Various publications on the size, economic significance and governance structures of the cultural sector. Including Boekmancahier number 145, Winter 2025/2026, 37th volume, Artistic freedom under pressure. Polarisation, (Self)censorship. Power of Imagination
Social and Cultural Planning Office/Central Bureau of Statistics: Figures on employment, economic impact and forms of organisation in the cultural sector.
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