Cultural journalist since 1996. Worked as theatre critic, columnist and reporter for Algemeen Dagblad, Utrechts Nieuwsblad, Rotterdams Dagblad, Parool and regional newspapers through Associated Press Services. Interviews for TheaterMaker, Theatererkrant Magazine, Ons Erfdeel, Boekman. Podcast maker, likes to experiment with new media. Culture Press is called the brainchild I gave birth to in 2009. Life partner of Suzanne Brink roommate of Edje, Fonzie and Rufus. Search and find me on Mastodon.
The crisis is over. Especially if you are in the fine art business. In 2014, the global art market grew by 7% from the peak year of 2013. In total, the art trade turned over a value of 51 billion euros last year, making that market almost as big as the economy of Uzbekistan. The internationally authoritative website artnet reports that today
The Grand Theatre in Groningen is dying. Yesterday, the city council of the northern university city decided that no more money should be poured into the theatre, which is in acute cash trouble. Bills from suppliers and independent artists have not been paid for several months, and financial reserves are more than depleted. We have received reports from artists...
Will Ivo and Jan join this impressive list? Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Joan Littlewood, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, Peggy Ashcroft, Harold Pinter, Peter Hall, Judi Dench, Alan Bennett, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Alan Ayckbourn, Maggie Smith, Gillian Lynne and Michael Frayn. All big names of British theatre. International celebrities, all of whom have been awarded an Olivier, say the British...
Miracles happen underground near Geneva. Or rather, those miracles happen every second around us, but underground at Geneva they are being recorded. In 2013, they discovered God, or at least, a gate of light that betrayed the existence of the Higgs boson, the most elementary particle of elementary particles, which provides mass to everything around us. On 18...
Minister Jet Bussemaker fully embraces the report released by the WRR on Thursday 5 March. In that report, entitled 'Revaluing Culture', the Scientific Council for Government Policy makes an appeal to see culture simply as culture again. "In doing so, the WRR distances itself, and I support it, from the instrumental approach to culture. As if culture only has something to mean...
100 Dutch plays were presented to them, the 224 Dutch heavy users of our theatre seats who took part in a survey by the Amsterdam Institute for Theatre Studies. Plays that ranged from fairly well-known, such as Herman Heijermans' 'Op Hoop van Zegen' from the beginning of the last century and Joost van den Vondel's 460-year-old tragedy 'Lucifer', to completely unknown, such as...
Use arts funding for research&development, attracting venture capital and crowdfunding with public money. In this way, according to the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), the same public money can yield more. In an 'exploration' presented to the government today, this advisory board breaks a lance for more daring and commitment from the government to strengthen the Dutch cultural sector: 'Increasingly,...
Of Dutch people, the province can cut back even more on Culture. This week, Ipsos Synnovate presented a survey to that effect, and it was another slap in the face for the sector. Apparently, the image of art as an expensive kind of leftist hobby has not yet been eradicated by three years of optimistic NLPing by culture minister Jet Bussemaker's PR machine....
Not every piece of art can hang on every wall. Utrecht's Galerie Kuub has one such wall, which is a challenge for anyone wishing to hang a work of art in the otherwise generous space. This is because the wall is medieval, and over the centuries has had more layers, stamps and anchors added to it than an average new-build house will be able to handle in its lifetime. With or...
Theatre De Nieuwe Doelen in Gorinchem will close its doors on 31 May, due to lack of support in local politics. The city council, which also previously closed the music school, would like to continue using the building as a Village Hall for amateur artists. For professional theatre, a CDA party leader reported, those few enthusiasts can just go to Dordrecht. Theatre director Rob van Wijk...
The Netherlands is one of the few countries where Science Fiction plays no role in mainstream media, let alone in the arts. If we look upwards at all, it is through Govert Schilling's disarming Duplo bricks, or Vincent Icke's mildly ironic commentary in DWDD. Or turning 'Mission Earth', a failing soap opera with bickering comedians, into...
The General Court of Auditors, a high college of state that independently audits government spending, is blowing the whistle on Culture Minister Bussemaker. Indeed, in an interim opinion, published on 12 February, the Court of Audit states that nothing at all is yet clear about the real consequences of the previous cabinet's cuts. That cabinet, with the widely beloved Halbe...
In Amersfoort, one art hall is empty and one art hall is full. KAdE, only recently completed and already successful, was dismantled five years after opening and moved to another, even newer building, across the railway line. However, the city council does not appear to have been properly informed about the financial consequences of this move and is now stuck with and noose of at least 10...
Always thought art was something of creative wildlings, obsessed autistics, genius tinkerers in spite of themselves? Wrong. Art is something where 'strong communicators' call the shots. At least if it is up to minister Jet Bussemaker, and her oh, so progressive idea of making art primarily useful. For society. Just watch the horror video above. What we fear...
You can watch television again without guilt. After a two-and-a-half-year conflict, television broadcasters, producers and cable companies are coming to terms. This is going to make for a lot of happy TV, because after two years of waiting, the makers, actors and writers of television programmes will finally get the money they were entitled to all this time. And more. So does the lobby just make sense...
The play 'Heart' is one for your bucket list. In other words, the play 'Heart', created by Matzer Theatre Productions as an adaptation of Lisette Lewin's book 'Heart of Barbed Wire', is a play you really must have seen. Why? I'll give you 4 reasons why. 1: The book is no longer on sale Lisette Lewin wrote a book in 1992 that...
Last week, the Metaalkathedraal was celebrating. This 'creative breeding ground' in the picturesque no man's land between Utrecht and Leidsche Rijn can, thanks to a loan from a bank, grow into something that might become great fun for the neighbourhood, but also for people on the other side of town. The Metal Cathedral is an initiative of two artists. They...
De minister was erbij. Natuurlijk omdat Introdans een belangrijk gezelschap is, maar het was mooi meegenomen dat er bij deze avond met drie wereldpremières ook twee prijzen konden worden uitgereikt. En dat dat dan een ministerieel tintje kreeg. Trots op. Roel Voorintholt, artistiek leider van Introdans was door het publiek verkozen als winnaar van de Oeuvreprijs voor zijn werk met…
Dit is het Citaat van de Dag. Een voorstel. Omdat er zoveel leuke dingen gezegd worden, die soms geen toelichting behoeven, en soms veel. Heb je zelf suggesties: stuur ze naar de redactie.
Nathaniël Mellors is one of the funniest artists whose work is on show at Art Rotterdam. No moving painting, no coarse-grained fluid slides and no Arnoud Mik either: Mellors' latest work: The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview, is well-acted comedy about a serious intellectual subject: the art world. Building on the discovery that Neanderthals were not at all the primitive bat-wielding losers where...
Radio Netherlands World Broadcasting no longer exists. The subsidy was withdrawn because no one in the VVD knew what it was: shortwave. And because the PVV, which was also in government at the time, finds everything scary that contains the word 'world'. Bad for those who miss calls from the ANWB emergency centre at breakfast for the Alpenkreuzer, even worse for...
He had had a TED training. It couldn't be otherwise. Bart Moeyaert, poet, writer and multiple award winner, sometimes literally wriggled into numerous corners to warm up the Dutch literary guild to his plans for 2016. That year, for the first time in a long time, the Netherlands will host the Frankfurter Buchmesse again, the Art Basel of the literary world....
'Do you not agree with me that many of you - like members of Roman Catholic curia - are already trying to make yourselves immortal and indispensable? That you are suffering from severe mental and spiritual petrification?' Kees 't Hart measured himself a papal role on Sunday 18 January, when delivering The State of Dutch Literature,...
Radbraken. This is how it works: you tie someone to a sturdy cartwheel, then break all his or her bones by beating them country-wide with clubs, after which you braid the mangled limbs around the spokes of the wheel. It is essential that the punished person undergoes all this alive and conscious. After the treatment, you bring the wheel with...
Zelden twee vrouwelijke kunstenaars aan een tafel gezien die meer van elkaar verschilden dan Dominique Goblet en Leela Corman. Twee vrouwelijke striptekenaars, aan weerszijden van Peter Breedveld die elk jaar als kenner van het comic genre wordt ingevlogen op Writers Unlimited. Corman, naast striptkenaar ook danseres, schrijft haar verhalen in een vrij herkenbare stijl. Indrukwekkende verhalen, historisch, zoals haar laatste…
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français
You must be logged in to post a comment.