All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
The other day, this einzelgänger joined a group event here in The Hague. For the first time. With buses full of local residents heading for the Gemeentemuseum. Wondering with which neighbours I would go to see art, experience again what a museum feels like after closing time and attend a workshop or lecture. For inspiration. It worked out. Experiencing What an awful lot of fun to run into neighbours at the museum,...
Does your town suffer from vacancy? Is the city centre poorly accessible? Are you looking for a tourist attraction or a unique logo? A cable car solves all your problems. Your municipality can still benefit despite the great interest from all over the Netherlands in this new means of transport. But above all, don't listen to me, but to everyone before me. Clean and sustainable alternative In Groningen...
Of course: Hugo Borst, Suzanne Vega, Herman Koch. Enough reason to travel to Utrecht between 11 and 13 May. But there is much more to experience at the International Literature Festival Utrecht. And it doesn't even always have to do with books. I will show you a few things I am definitely looking forward to in festival palace TivoliVredenburg. The...
In the Volkskrant of 8 May 2017, Sarah Sluimer lets loose. The opinion maker (for Volkskrant and De Correspondent, among others) used to be a theatre maker and now wonders aloud why she is a bit done with theatre. Because she actually writes that down. I quote: 'I breathed theatre. I ate performances and was convinced that what was there,...
Sheila Sitalsing went to work as a journalist after studying economics. After the weekly Elsevier, she joined the Volkskrant, in which she now has a column three times a week on page 2. Sitalsing won the Heldring Prize for best Dutch columnist in 2013. She also appears with some regularity in the foam & ash section of the TV programme Buitenhof....
The SER report published on Friday 21 April rubs it in nicely: the cultural sector is on the verge of collapse. It is even worse than a year ago. This shows that the patience of a PvdA culture minister over the past four years has not helped. Indeed: Halbe Zijlstra's multiplier of misery is doing its job entirely as expected....
Henk van der Waal is a philosopher and poet. His collections have been awarded several prizes and nominated for several awards. In 2012, his philosophical essay Denken op de plaats rust. Design of a philosophical attitude to life, and now the philosophical dialogue Mysticism for the Wicked has been published. [bol_product_links block_id=”bol_58f89055ec618_selected-products” products=”9200000060486849,9200000075985970″ name="vanderwaal" sub_id="huydinck" link_color="003399″ subtitle_color="000000″ pricetype_color="000000″ price_color="CC3300″ deliverytime_color="009900″ background_color="FFFFFF" border_color="D2D2D2″ width="250″ cols="1″ show_bol_logo="0″ show_price="1″...
Displaced paintings by Armando. Artists fleeing the city. A tinpot that brought financial disaster and summer festivals that attract tens of thousands of visitors every year. And you thought Amersfoort was boring? A footnote along the A1 motorway? Forget it. Let me tell you about this city struggling with its cultural identity. A story in eighteen impressions. Guilty landscape In his youth...
For those who like to be around art, politics has become a bit more fun again, since 15 March. Since the 2017 elections, Thierry Baudet has been in the House of Representatives. Thierry Baudet knows a lot about art, he thinks, and we will come to know it, too. In fact, Thierry Baudet is the best thing about art these days...
A submitted message puts your organisation in direct contact with all Culture Press readers[ref]Status April 2017: 5900 on facebook, 16,130 on twitter, 2000 in the mail, 26,000/month on the website[/ref]. Just like a regular message, your message comes along in the news stream, and newsletters. It is also shared on facebook and we connect you there with every...
In a discussion (on facebook, where else) about NRC Handelsblad's departure from Blendle, an editor of that newspaper made very disparaging remarks about a reader who had paid 30 cents for one of his articles. In a recent article on Frankwatching, an expert concluded that investigative journalism could only survive if we started subsidising newspapers....
A dance performance for youth (6+) recently caused a stir. Pupils from groups 5 to 8 of the Islamic Aboe Daoedschool in Utrecht visited IJspaleis (6+) by dance theatre group plan d-. At a dance of two penguins in love, one of the teachers requested that the performance be stopped. This scene was not considered suitable for the pupils, the explanation said. It...
The first bare female breast I consciously observed in my life was the happily swishing boob of the girl in the Fa advertisement. It must have been sometime deep in the 1970s. The same time the Pacifisties Socialistiese Partij also did something similar with a cow in the background. Now, a good forty years later, the...
By now, we are a little surrounded by voting guides and electoral compasses. There is one for every area of policy. What to vote for if you have a beating heart for art? The Correspondent gave a nice little overview the other day. It showed that art is indeed a hobby of mainly left-wing parties, at least when it comes to subsidised art. Art...
Brief summary. On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the presentation of the important award (actually two: audience award and jury award) called Code Cultural Diversity Award. I did not see a single fellow journalist(s). What I did see were lots of professional advocates speaking on behalf of people who were barely present themselves in the Galaxy. NB: the author is of Aruban-Chinese-Dutch descent and in no way wants to undermine the urgency of the issue of diversity...
On 15 February 2017, the 2017 CCD Award ceremony will take place in De Melkweg. Jury chair Mariëtte Hamer will pronounce the redeeming word and tell who will win the €5,000 prize. It is a dazzling programme with unique performances by the five nominees. From rap to film, from song to dance, everything will be in...
There are those, including in the arts, who still think the world has not changed for good. Who suspect that a vote for a culture-friendly party will at a stroke turn back the clock eight years. Those people will wake up after 15 March to a new world, even if the Netherlands has suddenly chosen whether or not...
Parallax Views is the overarching theme of the 46th Rotterdam Film Festival. Be persuaded to look with new eyes. Director Bero Beyer, who took office in 2015, on his second festival.
Kids are in the front seat this year. Director Rebecca Matthews and programme director Juliana Engberg have said so themselves (see here and here). Children have a creativity and spontaneity that adults could learn from, and that deserves its own place in the year that Aarhus is European Capital of Culture. Or: in Aarhus 2017, as the 'locals' say. Children also deserve a...
The positive effects of culture are demonstrated again and again. It is high time the sector used these facts in improving its image. Our western and southern neighbours have boosted the image of culture with a number of successful initiatives. The sports sector is another example of image building that the cultural sector can learn from. There...
Dissatisfied with the city's art policy, visual artists are leaving Amersfoort. Not physically, but with their work. In the coming year, they will exhibit together in numerous places in the Netherlands. They largely leave their own hometown behind. They have little faith in the municipality's newly developed cultural vision. Why? You can read about that below. And also that their own...
Museums should be places where everyone feels welcome, argues art editor and curator-in-training Roxy Jongewaard. An argument for public and free museums: "A museum for everyone who can pay 17.50 in entrance fees is not a museum for everyone." In the coming year, I get to live out a personal dream: I will work as a curator in a major Dutch museum....
A usually reliable source reports that the winner of the New Year's Eve lottery wants to dedicate a significant part of her prize to culture. In this way, she wants to undo the cuts made by Rutte I. Six million will go directly to the Dutch Travel Opera. Another four million is earmarked for a new integral performance of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen. Also scheduled is a revival of Tristan und Isolde...
Bart Rutten becomes the new artistic director of Utrecht's Centraal Museum Bart Who? Bart quite an important figure. Bart Rutten was the man behind some great blockbusters at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. That he is going to Utrecht after Malevich and Matisse says a lot about the good work of his predecessor Edwin Jacobs. It says even more...
Every year in early January, a beautifully printed booklet falls through my letterbox. This tradition of Kopper Monday has almost been lost. Only some small printing companies still send their relations a Kopper edition. What exactly is it, and why is it so special? Copper Monday is the first Monday after Epiphany (6 January). Traditionally a holiday for the guilds. The...
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