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.
Rijksmuseum Twente can probably stay open now that culture minister Jet Bussemaker (PvdA) has promised the chamber to halve the planned 50% cut in operations. Moreover, she is going to fight hard to keep the Cultural and Artistic Formation subject in secondary education as a compulsory examination subject 'left or right',
Terwijl de stad enorm moet bezuinigen op muziekscholen, bibliotheken, een paar toneelclubs en andere leuke dingen voor de mensen, zoals openbaar vervoer en zorg, bouwt den Haag wel een nieuw kunstgebouw. Liever gezegd: de gemeente steekt 181 miljoen in het slopen en vernieuwen van de theaters aan het Spui, omdat de architect die het complex 20 jaar geleden bouwde kennelijk zijn werk niet goed heeft gedaan.
The Netherlands' greatest artist is dead. Can happen. But can I then also curse heartily? Because Jeroen Willems is irreplaceable. As a journalist, you know the drill: of actors over 60, or of otherwise fragile stature, you have a necrootje ready. If you are well-known and meet the requirements, count on your friends and acquaintances to...
The previous Secretary of State for Culture, Halbe Zijlstra, made his draconian cuts cast in concrete. The 35-40 per cent cut in the budgets of orchestras, theatre companies and some museums has become law. The new minister of culture, PvdA star Jet Bussemaker, cannot change that at all an iota. And if she even wanted to: the architect of the cuts she has to allow sits in the chamber as the ruling party's group leader. No chance That he will allow his policies to go down the drain.
Anyway: while Amsterdam's city newspaper Parool was embarking on a campaign against the Dutch capital's city company at the behest of the Flemish publishing board, the same Toneelgroep Amsterdam was winning the hearts of New York audiences with a production of the already years-old 'Roman Tragedies', which a few here did not even like overall: http://www.wijbrandschaap.nl/2007/06/romeinse-tragedies-hf2007ta/
If the Netherlands consistently sticks to previously adopted PVV positions, the second chamber will say 'No' to a European investment in culture, innovation and media on 21 November 2012. However, if the current Rutte government sticks to the pro-European stance included in the coalition agreement, the Netherlands will cease its opposition to the 1.8 billion euro contribution to strengthening culture, which has now been approved by all other European member states.
We too retweeted it: "Germany increases culture subsidy by 100 million". And we thus fed a half-truth. That half-truth is, that Germany is a heaven for culture lovers, a haven for people fed up with the chilly austerity of the Rutte governments. Germany may seem nice, but, As Volkskrant correspondent Merlijn Schoonenboom noted in March this year, cuts are being made there at least as hard as here.
The discussion was and is endless, but now we have figures. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science's new 'key figures', we now know how much the state (all of us) are spending for the opportunity to experience art: per inhabitant, the state spends 38.90 per year on subsidies for dance, theatre, museums, youth theatre, opera and orchestras. So that's just over 3 euros a month. Indeed something to get into each other's hair about, we think.
De overheid heeft de laatste decennia weinig moeite gedaan om in het Egyptische Damietta een culturele scene van de grond te krijgen. Er zijn geen werkruimtes. Geen galeries. Alleen een hele grote bibliotheek en een “cultuurpaleis”. Die zijn beide pas vijf jaar geleden geopend. Daarnaast zijn er een paar kleine onafhankelijke initiatieven. In de openbare ruimte.
Minister Bijsterveld van OCW gaat het land vragen om advies. Deze week is een zogenaamde internetconsultatie van start gegaan over het voornemen van haar ministerie om de Culturele en Kunstzinnige Vorming van Havo en VWO scholieren af te schaffen. ‘het Veld’ kan nu reageren, dus wij stellen voor dat u uw mening, en vooral uw inhoudelijke argumenten aan het ministerie kenbnaar maakt, via deze link:
This week, the curtain officially fell on the Theatre Emabassy, a club of inspired people who had Dutch artists collaborate with artists in developing countries such as Honduras, Bhutan and Congo. The resulting performances were only sporadically seen in the Netherlands, but every now and then a project made a broad impression here too, such as a 'On Hope of Blessing', played by real fishermen, but from Mali.
The Theatre Museum's entire collection has been saved. The archives of luminaries such as Wim Kan and Louis Davids, as well as 50,000 theatre reviews, 30,000 theatre posters, 146,000 photographs of 22,000 performances, 26,000 portrait photographs of 2,450 theatre-makers and an extensive audio and video collection will be housed at the University of Amsterdam.The move is possible now that the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), with the ever-money-hungry State Secretary for Culture Halbe Zijlstra, is no longer seizing the reserves of the Theater Instituut Nederland (TIN).
Theatre company the Utrecht Games, city company of the Netherlands' fourth largest city, is on the brink of bankruptcy. It was recently revealed that the company led by artistic and business director Jos Thie has a deficit of €2.1 million. Correspondence that has since surfaced shows that it was already clear in May this year that the problems were getting out of hand. That was a month after the Utrecht subsidy advisory committee issued its laudatory opinion, and a few weeks before the Council for Culture issued its very thrifty advice.
It had to be a party, because there has been enough shouting and complaining and it doesn't help anything anyway. After a year in which the theatre sector in particular felt the hard hand of Mark Ruttes happy crisis policy, awards had to be handed out again. So the already not-so-huge crème de la crème of the Dutch theatre world gathered again for the gala at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg. It was a valiant attempt at optimism, while
Er waren nogal wat VVD’ers boos op ons, omdat we vorig jaar de Rotterdamse wethouder van Cultuur betrapten op een dommigheidje: ze stelde dat culturele instellingen doordeweeks helemaal niet open hoefden, omdat hardwerkende mensen toch alleen maar in het weekend tijd hadden voor kunst.
I did it just like that. Proclaimed a show as the most important theatre innovation for 20 years. That's daring. Even though I made the term a bit more vague in a subsequent tweet, because, yes, there has been quite a lot of innovation in recent years, left and right in theatres. So let's stick to 'the last few years'. And then...
Vanaf vrijdag 7 september te zien in de foyer van de Amsterdamse Stadsschouwburg: deze dansende kopie van de kunstenaar Leonard van Munster. Een mooie combi van dans, techniek, theater en kunst, leek ons.
There has been another interesting cultural twist to the 'Europe debate'. Someone has called out that it watermark of the new series of euro banknotes will include a picture of 'the rape of Europe' by the Greek supreme god Zeus. The anti-Europe and anti-Greeks in the various timelines need no more to frame the banking mafia's plot against the European citizen.
Winning two awards in one weekend, that doesn't often happen to a person, not even in the award-winning art world. Eric de Vroedt is a theatre-maker and writer who did happen to one. Entering his final season 'MightySociety' he got the Amsterdam Prize (35,000 euros) and the Prize of Criticism (a statuette), determined by a jury of newspaper reviewers.
The major research and management consulting firm Berenschot has calculated that, on balance, the cuts to the arts turn out to be not too bad. Client of the study, De Volkskrant, then headlined that big. And indeed, it is kind of good news that the pile-up of cuts (the state 24% less, the provinces 20% less and the municipalities only 9 % less) is so low in net terms. We were surprised for a moment, but when we asked around, we found out
Lots of bobbing on boards. That's what drama on television is mostly. And actors with weird reverberations in intimate scenes. That too. It is easy to shoot at attempts to bring successful performances to the TV or cinema screen. They almost always make viewers feel that their medium is shooting back 80 years in development. This is also why every attempt by the Dutch Public Broadcasting Corporation to make our fairly highly regarded stage art attractive to a wider audience via TV fails. Theatre or opera on screen is especially suitable for
In the small Dutch art world, it is impossible to put together a committee of experts which is entirely independent. Anyone with knowledge of business also has knowledge of people, or has worked at an institution that is now to be judged. Or works there now. Reason enough, then, for speculation and conspiracy theories.
On 12 August 2012, during the worst watched Summer guests-broadcast of all time (343,000 viewers) told trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort about The Johnny Cash Project. A great example of what crowdsourcing can do for creativity: in 2010, everyone was invited to add a drawing to an animated music video to Johnny Cash's latest song. We now know what and who is behind this:
Maastricht is going to do things differently. Starting next year, the city council will determine what art is needed, and art institutions will be allowed to submit plans that fit within that framework. If their plans do not comply, they will not get any money. Sounds nice, but the capital of Limburg is treading on thin ice.
I would like to take a moment to put this one to you. Quote from this morning's volkskrant, where editor Harmen Bockma makes a valiant attempt to list all the figures of culture carnage, but fails a little in doing so. It also remains difficult to identify the breakdown in the basic infrastructure add to the dropout at the fund, but it is proving altogether difficult to discern what
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