"There is something strange going on. Municipalities have no money to build or furnish such a theatre, and companies have too little money to make productions. So it is chafing on both sides." Huub Huikeshoven, trained as an interior designer, works at Theateradvies, an organisation that advises on the layout and design of theatres. There, it turns out quite...
Thousands of Dutch people have memories of a time spent in AZCs across the country, but there is no physical archive of this part of Dutch heritage. How can people with a refugee background remember their first place of residence in the Netherlands if there are no longer any traces of this place? How can we reflect on and dwell on...
Two museums for the price of one. With a Mona Lisa in the making. 20 km from the Dutch border. Which is more beautiful? The building or the collection? Last weekend, Antwerp's Royal Museum of Fine Arts reopened after no less than 11 years. And that resonates far beyond the port city. I walk inside with a Danish art historian,...
A school friend was a mountain climber. He was good at it; he never did anything else in holidays. The school friend was tall and so strong that he could pull himself up by one finger. On the first day after the autumn holidays, he told me that another climber in his group had fallen to his death before his eyes. If I remember correctly, he was alive...
Five days after the opening of the exhibition Bruno Taut: beyond imagination, museum Het Schip had to close. Alice Roegholt, director of this museum dedicated to the Amsterdam School, saw two years of preparation go up in smoke. But after only a few days she thought: 'Let's turn it around and look at what is possible.'....
80 million it should cost, and it should hold a lot of people, with three theatres, and it should all happen on the lot now occupied by the Theater aan de Parade in Den Bosch. That has proved so difficult that there has been fuss about it since 2006. Now there is a draft, approved and all, of...
There is something incredibly cosy about it. While outside the storm is howling through deserted, boarded-up shopping streets full of demolished mini houses, baking pasties against the malady. But so it does work. On the side of The Kop, the most famous stand at the Anfield stadium on Liverpool's Oakfield Road, Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk established a neighbourhood cooperative in 2012, when megalomaniacal urban renewal plans...
Controversial and an eyesore for many: Forum Groningen. It has occupied minds considerably over the past few years. On Friday 29 November, the cultural centre in Groningen was finally opened to the general public. Interest in Forum is certainly there, as the counter already stood at 50,000 visitors on Tuesday morning. The prestige project that has cost the Groninger quite a few taxpayers' pennies...
It is actually a footnote in the press release that lobby organisation Kunsten '92 sent out into the world today. But, as always with footnotes, it did contain the most important news. Because Kunsten 92, the club in which organisations in the arts sector polder, is "exploring cooperation" with the Creative Industry Federation. The latter is the Arts '92 of everything that is also culture and creativity,...
There is an artist café in Utrecht that few Utrechters know about. And I don't mean Theatercafé De Bastaard, where by now a whole generation of actors, filmmakers and writers come from, but the artists' foyer of TivoliVredenburg. I've eaten and hung out there a few times, as an embedded reporter of De Nacht van de Poëzie, when it's very late into...
'Architecture has always been seen as an afterthought. I see it as a necessary thing, not an extra. You now see, for instance, that technocrats have taken over power. They come up with a technical solution for everything. They can make buildings that are well insulated, that use geothermal heat: that is now the job of the builders. But all these technocrats forget that it's...
The miracle happened right at the first location. On a bare piece of dune in front of beach café Oscars there are rocking benches. From one of those benches I looked, swaying, over a slope of marram grass, then a couple of terraces and beyond that the sea. As it was a weekday, but summer warm, some bathers had already settled into beach chairs. Crowded it was...
Geenstijl.nl, the website once founded to celebrate free speech in all its manifestations, has discovered something. Well - it wasn't that complicated to discover, as the centre of Utrecht is rather difficult to get around. But so it is about Dries Verhoeven's construction site, one of the manifestations of the otherwise often rather inconspicuous...
If you went to Rome before the 17th century you were a pilgrim. If you went to Rome the century after that you were a searching artist. Did you go to Rome from the 19th century onwards then you were an honourable 'Tourist' on Grand Tour, seeking inspiration and moral uplift. Going to Rome anno 2018 you are a...
Classic joke about the attendant: "Proudly, the Rijksmuseum's new attendant reports to the museum management at the end of his first working day. 'Mr director, I think you will be pleased with me. I have already sold two Picassos and one Apple today!' " (Source: www.debestemoppen.nl) Thus illustrating the supposed relationship of the traditional attendant to the modern...
You probably know the feeling. Holidays at last. No more thinking about work or school. And yet. Your cottage or flat is a miniature version of home. Whereas on holiday, you really want to live differently. Still, why those big bedrooms, the sparse plumbing and still the television central? So this summer I stayed with the kids for a week in the...
Ever travelled to The Hague by train? Then you must have been surprised when you walked out of The Hague Central Station. A more desolate square than the Koningin Julianaplein hardly exists. And that in the capital. Rough and crooked paving, a few hundred haphazardly parked (and sometimes broken) bicycles, some sales carts for flowers or snacks and hardly any place to...
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...
Joop van Caldenborgh, founder of Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, has commissioned a classical museum that builds on existing conventions about presenting art. The art should be central and the building does not matter, so to speak. Yet the design plays an important role. Architecture critic Tim de Boer dives deeper into the thoughts behind the building,...
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