Wim Pijbes takes a Trumpian look at Rotterdam politics in the Volkskrant.

Curious piece by Wim Pijbes in today's Volkskrant, under the title ‘Giving makes Giving; why now is the time to make friends‘. The man who once ran the Rijksmuseum, and has been allowed to sprinkle the money of Rotterdam port barons for a few years now, reminds the art sector that a lot of baby boomers are dying. Not the ordinary boomer (anyone a year older than GenZ).

The archetypal boomer, in other words, who in ‘the cheap times’ could buy an inner-city building worth 3 million now for a trifle, and who stayed in the director's chair for too long, leaving the generation after him to grow up in a completely different universe.

Those archetypal boomers are dying soon, sometimes with, often without offspring, and all of fundraising Netherlands has been busy visiting those hospices for a while now with a view to a nice legacy. So far, nothing new under the sun, and thus little reason to read the piece by the director of Stichting Droom en Daad. But the piece is also not at all about that tsunami of legacies heading towards the arts sector.

Slack alderman

After all, there are municipal elections on 18 March and it could well be that a city like Rotterdam will change colour. That is in fact what Pijbes‘ ’opinion' is about. In recent years, Droom en daad has in fact a lot of money put in in Rotterdam culture. There is money in Fenix, De Pot (Boymans' depot) and the Fotomuseum. That is how the port barons behind Droom en Daad make up for their tax flight, and Rotterdam is quite grateful for it.

Indeed, there has been a Culture alderman there in City Hall for years who has let his entire policy be determined by ‘the market’. So D66 alderman Kasmi does not excel in decisiveness. He does have the independent arts consultancy killed and millions spent on rigging a new structure, which yet again proved awkward, but broadly speaking, Rotterdam's visual arts and heritage sector has been helped enormously by private enterprise, which, they revealed in De Doelen sometime in 2012, has nothing to do with theatre. Reason why Theatre Rotterdam is still in trouble.

Trump

Anyway: Droom en Daad is pouring millions into the Maas city and Pijbes feels that “thank you!” has not been said often enough: “In July 2023, when the purchase of warehouse Santos was announced as the new home of the Dutch Photo Museum, the city council's (telephone) response was not ‘congratulations’, but ‘what does the district council think?’. And at the museum's press release about the purchase and donation of 38 million, again the largest donation ever in our country, both city council and ministry refused to give a quote about the new home for the national photography collection.”

There is something Trump-like about it, this passage. Dream and Deed is a bit grumpy about the soft tone in which the city shows its gratitude. Worse: that the municipality dared to call attention to citizen participation, Pijbes finds extremely ungrateful. After all, democracy stands in the way of grand plans by entrepreneurs, Pijbes experienced earlier when he did not want a cycle path through the Rijksmuseum and the local branch of the Cyclists' Union thought something of it.

Making friends

Fortunately, according to the patron, the government is learning: Utrecht and Rotterdam are now embracing wealthy givers, and they should continue to do so. ‘By making friends before they are needed. By devising a multi-year strategy to find, recruit and engage friends. And engaging these friends, cultivating them into an engaged donor.’

So these can be pocketed by Rotterdam city councillors when they go to form a new college. So you should not only be very grateful. Above all, you have to make friends. ‘Especially with government resources under pressure, a complaining arts sector does not help. Museums, orchestras, companies and theatres, like all other charities, need to make friends who will soon need them badly.’

I don't know about you, dear readerfriend, but that sounds almost like a threat.

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