“There are only losers” Surveillance without visible oversight

How the Dutch Photo Museum court case exposes a broader governance question about legitimacy, oversight and public accountability

Sometimes the state of an institution is revealed not in a boardroom, not in an annual report or even in the careful language of an official statement, but on 18 May this year in a place where no one wants to end up voluntarily: a courtroom. There, between legal precision and administrative restraint, an organisation is sometimes stripped of its institutional backdrop. The focus then is not on the formal structure, but on how it really functioned when no one was looking, or precisely when it was thought that no one was looking.

That made the case around the Dutch Photo Museum more than a conflict surrounding the dismissal of director Birgit Donker in mid-2025. Over the course of months, it shifted from an employment law issue to a governance case in which not only the actions of a director, but precisely those of the Supervisory Board, the role of an interim director, media pressure and the tension between public legitimacy and closed board culture slowly began to intertwine.

What makes this case so uncomfortable is that it does not primarily show how supervision fails. Rather, it shows how supervision sometimes slowly dissolves into obviousness. A supervisory board exists, meets, receives papers, talks to directors, approves decisions and, on paper, represents an organisation's institutional vigilance. But good supervision rarely becomes visible in moments of crisis. It is precisely in the quiet infrastructure that should exist before that: performance reviews, informal signals made formal, independent lines of information, corrections deployed early, discomfort that does not need to escalate first. Once that infrastructure proves thin, supervision paradoxically only becomes visible through conflict.

When surveillance only becomes visible

This was felt at several points in the photo museum trial. One of the most quoted statements came from Wanda van Kerkvoorden, chairman of the Supervisory Board, who opened the hearing by saying: “There are only losers.” It was a sentence that sounded human and almost conciliatory. At the same time, it took on sharper connotations in the context of the courtroom. For whereas Van Kerkvoorden spoke in collective terms, the judge instead pulled the file apart into individual managerial responsibility: who knew what, when was action taken and what role did the council itself play in the escalation of the conflict?

This became sharper when the judge repeatedly returned to an element that looks almost banal on paper but is essential in governance terms: the lack of structural performance reviews. Her now telling question sounded almost like a governance refrain: “I'm going to ask again anyway, I think. Why there were no performance appraisals with Ms Donker in the period after the one-off appraisal in 2021?” That this question came up so often also indirectly touched on Van Kerkvoorden's chairmanship. In almost every governance structure, the chairman of a Supervisory Board is precisely the first guardian of rhythm, employability and file discipline. With that, the question in court became not only why talks were missing, but also how a Board under her leadership could operate for so long without a visible structural employer track.

The repetition was not legal theatre. It laid bare a foundation. A Supervisory Board is not a crisis body that becomes visible only when a breach of trust has become irreparable. It is an employer, corrective mechanism, independent sparring partner and a form of institutional memory. When severe qualifications are only expressed at a late stage, while a formal supervisory track remains thin, an uncomfortable governance question arises: did a long process escalate here, or did seriousness only become formally visible when conflict and public pressure coincided?

The Council as the subject of the dossier

That very tension was exacerbated by the contradiction between the ‘FAQ’ and the courtroom. The FAQ outlined the contours of a council that had acted carefully and according to a clear process. Serious signals came in, investigations were conducted, the chief executive was given an opportunity to respond, trust was found to be irreparably damaged, and then communication was undertaken with restraint. In that narrative, the council was almost outside the problem: a body that corrected as soon as sufficient facts were available. As the gist from the documents shows, the Council positioned itself there at a certain distance, as a responsible actor that intervened only when action was unavoidable.

In court, that picture shifted noticeably. There, the question arose not only whether information had been withheld or employees were under pressure, but also how the Council itself had fulfilled its role in the years before. After all, as soon as a supervisor states that there were structural concerns about work culture, staff turnover, information provision and social safety, a second question automatically arises: how could this remain insufficiently visible or insufficiently formally addressed for so long? A supervisory board is not just a recipient of information from a director. It has its own duty to inform, its own employer role and the responsibility to ensure that signals can reach the line of supervision without first travelling through crisis or reputation pressure.

This became particularly palpable in the discussion on staff representation. The FAQ emphasised that the Council did not have sufficient oversight of culture and that employees apparently did not feel free to speak out. But it became clear in court that no structural direct consultation with the PVT had been set up for a long time. The judge probingly asked why that had not been organised earlier from its own responsibility. This was not a procedural finesse, but a fundamental governance question. A supervisor who later claims to have had insufficient oversight cannot remain completely outside the infrastructure of that oversight.

Therein lies the administrative core of this file. The FAQ is not per se untrue. It is mostly incomplete. It carefully explains why the Council felt it had to intervene, but much less why previous supervision was not more visible, consistent and formalised. In the courtroom, exactly that missing prior history became important. Supervision there was judged not only on the final intervention, but on the rhythm that should have preceded it.

From explanation to legitimisation

Public communication after the dismissal sharpened this even further. Statements spoke of terms like “social safety”, “mental health”, “influencing information” and “obstructing oversight”. These are heavy managerial qualifications, especially when publicly associated with an outgoing director. What made this communication extra fraught was that the council's official statement not only spoke of a breach of trust, but explicitly stated that information relevant to supervision had been shared “repeatedly” incorrectly or incompletely. In addition, social safety and mental strain of employees were directly linked to managerial considerations.

This shifted communication from neutral explanation to normative positioning. A supervisor then not only explains a decision, but also publicly defines the gravity of the actions of the person leaving. This is precisely why it became relevant in court whether this severity stemmed mainly from demonstrable facts, or partly from the need to convincingly legitimise one's own intervention. According to the documents, the judge therefore confronted the Council with a simple but sharp question: why did a more neutral message not suffice?

Therein lies a classic dilemma for supervisors. A Board must explain far-reaching decisions. But it is at the same time an employer and therefore co-responsible for the reputation of the person leaving. In the FAQ, this tension was resolved towards necessary diligence. In the courtroom, room emerged for a different reading: that public communication served not only to explain but also to legitimise one's own decision administratively, possibly even before criticism of supervision itself became more widely visible.

That was the moment when the Council was no longer just a referee in the case, but a joint subject of it.

It was precisely there that it became apparent how damaging the actions of the Supervisory Board and interim director had become towards Donker. In court, it was argued on her behalf that she was “by the RVT for the figurative bus” had been thrown and that in the statement of defence “in a disrespectful, hurtful and suggestive manner” a picture was painted of an authoritarian administrator who did not tolerate dissent. That image was then reinforced with the Unravelling enquiry, which took place only after her departure and whose toughest conclusions were used as administrative confirmation after all.

The claim that MT members would quit upon Donker's return also deserves careful reading. According to the Fotomuseum, they reported “individually and with individual reasons” and would the MT later “as a collective the confidence” have resigned, but the documents do not show that this threat was independently verified beforehand as a firm, shared intention to resign. This creates the picture of a Council that not only defended a resignation, but gradually deployed multiple managerial and communicative means to underpin the chosen line: public qualifications, internal statements, a later culture survey and an interim director who came to stand in that same managerial line. 

The administrative line closes

The role of interim director Roderick van der Lee took on special significance in that context. Not only because his person was partly at the heart of the issue, but because his position made the institutional tension more visible. In almost any crisis, an interim director may be logical and necessary. But when a crisis revolves around oversight, legitimacy and managerial purity, a temporary appointment takes on a different connotation. Then the focus shifts to lines of authority: who governs, who corrects, who legitimises, and how transparent is this transition?

Van der Lee thus became less an individual case and more a governance mirror. Not the cause of systemic failure, but a sign that governance lines were becoming more diffuse under pressure. Why was an independent third party not chosen as interim director, as is customary in the sector? That was not an explicit question in this session, but one of the broader questions that lingered around the Supervisory Board.

In addition, the absence of new general and artistic director Zippora Elders Tahalele, who has been in charge of the museum since April, was conspicuous. Her absence in itself is not a formal reproach; a courtroom has no duty of attendance for a newly appointed director in an ongoing case about her predecessor. Still, it caused surprise. Not only because a director with final responsibility in a case that so emphatically revolves around supervision, administrative legitimacy and the relationship between Board of Trustees. And therefore as a management would possibly want to observe for herself how her Board operates and how a judge files the administrative line for diligence, timing and role purity. But also because Elders Tahalele did not just take office as an individual successor, but became part of a new administrative set-up.

The museum's Supervisory Board deliberately chose a new collegial model in which a general and artistic director together with a yet-to-be-appointed business director form a two-headed board. Precisely in a case that revolves so much around lines of authority, role purity and restoration of trust, such a redesign underlines that administrative structure is itself part of restoring legitimacy. Her absence was thus not given legal weight, but institutional.

Media as an accelerator of surveillance

In parallel, the media operated as a second form of surveillance, albeit of a different nature. Without media, much would presumably have remained indoors. With media, indoors became public. But journalism is rarely a neutral conveyor belt of facts. It selects, weighs, accelerates and creates timing.

The Volkskrant visibly played a role in bringing out signals from within the organisation at earlier stages. Anonymous sources (about which the Press Council in this case critical judgement), internal tensions and wider concerns were given public weight. This is the classic strength of investigative journalism. At the same time, media coverage is rarely board-neutral. Once an organisation becomes a public topic, directors and supervisors no longer react not only to internal proportionality, but also to reputational risk.

Therefore, the relevant question is not whether the Volkskrant legally constituted the ground for dismissal. The gist from the papers reveals a more subtle question: whether publicity pressure helped determine when the Board decided that an internal problem could no longer remain internal. The threat of an article, the context of wider attention and the risk that not only the director but also the supervision would be questioned publicly changed the managerial urgency. As a result, media became not a cause but an accelerator.

This tension became even more pronounced as the journalistic methods themselves also became the subject of debate. The Press Council later criticised parts of de Volkskrant's reporting, precisely where heavy characterisations about culture and working atmosphere relied heavily on anonymous sources. This does not mean that the underlying concerns were thereby automatically incorrect. But it does show how administrative decision-making under public pressure rarely remains exclusively internal any more. As soon as a story gains weight outside the organisation, directors and supervisors react not only to facts and proportionality, but also to the plausibility and timing of what has already gone public.

NRC fulfilled a different role as a medium. Whereas the Volkskrant previously worked as a print accelerator, NRC acted more as a institutional mirror. It was not the crisis per se, but the structure behind it that became more central. That contradiction is interesting. Two media, same reality, different governance lens.

In this, anonymity played an important role. Anonymous sources are sometimes necessary. Without protection, people do not speak. But anonymous leaks also have a second effect: they create asymmetry. The source remains invisible, the reputational impact becomes public. Supervisors then react not only to facts, but to the combination of factual signals and public plausibility.

I experienced this tension myself earlier as chairman of the Supervisory Board at World Press Photo. There, too, a moral institute faced journalistic pressures, governance questions, reputation dynamics and a complex relationship between internal reality and public framing. NRC described at the time, an organisation in which ambition, workload, financial stress and supervision were beginning to intertwine. An employee stated that the Supervisory Board seemed to “shifting from being involved at a high strategic-advisory level, to day-to-day operations and decision-making”. This was a keen observation, as she precisely identified the supervisory dilemma between necessary distance and excessive proximity.

Later we talked about that within the governance itself a “turbulent period in many ways”, where it was true that “the intensive role of the supervisory board necessary and desirable” was. Precisely because World Press Photo is a moral institute, it showed there how dangerous the gap can become between external values and internal managerial tension.

E there, too, anonymous sources played a role. And there too, they sometimes added elements that did not always get to the heart of the matter. But that is precisely why, as the Supervisory Board, we opted for visible transparency. Not trying to prevent, but insight and recovery. Not defensive silence, but tightening governance, organising discussions, making role purity more explicit and showing publicly that supervision did not exist only on paper.

When innovation is also supervision

Perhaps there lies a second, more uncomfortable governance lesson there. Especially after a turbulent period, it is wise for a Supervisory Board not only to look back at processes and decisions, but also to make room for renewal. This could be in the appointment of an independent (co-)director, but equally in the question of whether a chairman of the Board himself is still the right person to guide a next phase of recovery and trust.

For any chairman, this is not a personal question, but an institutional one. Presidents in particular who steer through a protracted crisis build up administrative muscle memory: reflexes of defence, proximity to previous choices and an understandable tendency to stick to one's own line. What sometimes provides stability in a crisis can actually get in the way of renewal in a subsequent phase.

This is precisely why good supervision should also know when continuity is valuable, and when innovation itself becomes a form of responsibility. I therefore decided to make the necessary space at World Press Photo after completing the criss. In the case of the Netherlands Photo Museum, that lesson seems hardly visible yet. Rather, it seems to be clinging to its own positions and administrative line, while restoring legitimacy often starts with a willingness to re-examine its own role as well.

The broader lesson for the cultural sector

That is what makes this Fotomuseum dossier so relevant. What is embarrassing here is reputation-wise: the Dutch Photo Museum is not just a foundation. It is a moral institution. It does not sell a product, but legitimacy: truth, journalistic integrity, global outlook, visual justice. As a result, internal issues are more damaging than at a ‘ordinary’ organisation. This is precisely why governance cannot hide permanently behind an indoor culture when their legitimacy is public.

The cultural sector has known this tension for some time. Governance codes, self-evaluations and standards from parties like NVTC or Cultuur+Ondernemen help build frameworks. But codes do not replace rhythm. No independent lines of information. No managerial courage. No early dossier building. That is also what is emphatically emerging from the research From Sjarel Ex and Jaap van Manen came.

This is all the more relevant now that the sector itself is looking again at updating the Culture Governance Code. This reassessment is not just about abstract norms, but about questions that become tangible in files like this one: how visible must employment practices be, how independent should information lines be, when does supervision become too close or, on the contrary, too absent, and how do you ensure that legitimacy is not tested only when conflict or reputational damage have already overtaken the organisation. The photography museum file is thus not outside the sector, but in the middle of a broader administrative rethink.

Perhaps therein lies the deepest turmoil behind the dossier surrounding the Dutch Photo Museum. Not the question of who was right at each individual moment. Not even whether one Supervisory Board acted substantially differently from similar cultural boards under pressure. The more uncomfortable question lies elsewhere: how visible must supervision be to truly carry trust in institutions that represent public interests? Because once supervision becomes acutely recognisable only when media, courtroom and public reconstruction converge, the perspective shifts from a single case to a broader administrative reality. How much supervision is formally present, carefully recorded and institutionally respectable, but only really visible when it is taken out of seclusion and has to show publicly that it was there all along?

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