We kept a liveblog. Nice and old-fashioned, from the days when every month there was uproar somewhere about the government's handling of art. Now there is peace in the tent, as the PVV sardonically points out, because 'The Left' is now the bearer of policies devised by the PVV. The PVV predicts a black future for 'The Left' once the PVV comes to power.
Jet Bussemaker is satisfied. For the next few years, there will be little whining about the subsidies under her regime. She states this in her letter this weekend. After all, the basis of the system is fixed: there are great museums, symphony orchestras, opera and theatre clubs whose subsidies are cast in concrete. Or rather carved from classical marble, because money gets you
A reduction in the ww premium spend on a scheme to keep more people in work is not going ahead because more and more people are becoming unemployed, forcing the premium up. See here the positive effect of austerity by the government. The less you spend, the deeper the problems, the less you can spend, the worse it gets, the less you can spend. And the arts may again be the first to make that clear.
Those who think the library's collection is so important then, should see how they fund its preservation. So says culture minister Jet Bussemaker in response to questions by MP Bergkamp (D66). Bergkamp had asked these questions in response to the message That the post-1950 collection is not considered heritage by the ministry, and therefore shreddable is.
The Money Museum will close in a month, but its collection (as far as important) will go to De Nederlandsche Bank. The Tropenmuseum has been disbanded, but the collection will be housed elsewhere. However, only half of the library will be saved: everything from after 1950 is not interesting enough to preserve, according to minister Bussemaker. This is evident from the answers given by Culture Minister Bussemaker to questions by the SP.
Good news from the VSCD: this year, more theatre and concert tickets have been sold on pre-sale than last year. The press release reporting this, however, advises industrious journalists not to check with the local theatre to see if this is true. After all, according to the propaganda of the theatre boards, this is a national average, and "things they hear from their members".
An enthusiastic press release in times of severe headwinds. It calls for further reflection. Last Friday, a survey on the state of cooperation in the Dutch museum world was presented. After all, cooperation should be from Minister Bussemaker and kind of the Council for Culture. So it's nice that things are already going ok. Can we get back to fun things.
According to NRC Handelsblad Culture cuts became fatal for 'only' 11 theatre institutions. In doing so, they assume groups that actually dissolved themselves. In their overview, however, they overlook the companies that voluntarily dissolved themselves by merging with another company. In addition, there are a number of institutions that disbanded before the new round because it was already clear that they would not receive any money. If we do count those, we come to at least 34 companies. That is already 25% of what was on offer before the cuts.
More seats do not bring more spectators. The only way to get more spectators to venues and museums is: drop the price. This is according to figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics.
Update: According to the Filmkrant, it's not all that bad: http://www.filmkrant.nl/nieuws_2013/9842
It was announced today that a large archive containing almost all raw film material from the Netherlands in the shredder threatens to disappear. Since film laboratory Cineco is bankrupt due to the vanished demand for oldskool celluloid, the vault containing unique historical material must also go. Unless someone comes forward who wants to store the material. And that costs quite a bit of money. Even though we no longer work with the highly flammable nitrate films, all that plastic must be kept safe.
Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch sold 55,000 tickets this year, 5,000 less than in 2012. The festival, which this year was held from 1 to 11 August, did attract more crowds for the free offerings on the festival square. This brought the total number of visitors to the festival this year to 145,000, 5,000 more than in 2012. As the venue occupancy is still nice at 85%, the drop in ticket sales will mainly be due to a smaller offer of performances.
Despite the crisis, parents invest eagerly and heavily in their offspring's musical development. This is the finding of the Utrecht Centre for the Arts (UCK). Their talent development programmes are running well. "Parents are now more consciously choosing to spend money on this than ever before. They also come along to lessons more often and let their children start at an increasingly younger age," says cello teacher Floris Dercksen.
The Tropenmuseum has been saved, we already knew that, but the House of Representatives still wanted to know where that was paid from. After all: the government is not going to spend more money, we have to do that. Anyway. Culture minister Jet Bussemaker's answer to the parliamentary questions shows that museums will be able to spend 5.5 million less on art purchases in 2016 at least....
Jet Bussemaker, minister of culture since last autumn, is slowly but surely starting to repair the damage done by the previous cabinet, supported by the Dutch culture-hating party PVV.
5 million back for culture card, 2 million for museums, something more soon
Ah, what the heck. We can, of course, study the piece for ourselves first and then come up with a peppery response and interpretation to it, and it will certainly come. But why
Today, the Dutch pavilion of the Venice Biennale was opened by culture minister Jet Bussemaker. And she did so with a speech that the culture sector will appreciate. No longer the harsh and cold tone of Halbe Zijlstra's neo-conservative vacuousness, but a
More people go to popular art than 'high' or 'canonical' art. Researcher Andries van den Broek has researched this. Therefore, there are now figures explaining the word 'popular' and 'elite'. So
More than a decade without national pride does a lot to a country. Could it be true that the simultaneous closure of Stedelijk Museum and Rijksmuseum helped lead to the
Nothing worse than having to play an unsuccessful play thirty, or a hundred times, just because the show has been sold to theatres so many times. That's why it would be nice if companies could decide not to do it. Because now they wouldn't be able to.
Time for some good news about art. The renovation of the Rijksmuseum may have taken years longer than expected, and also caused much more discussion than would have been necessary: the case is
The Council for Culture, recently reinforced with new members with a lot of management talent and business acumen, has to accept defeat. Indeed, culture minister Jet Bussermaker is disregarding a key pillar of the council's latest advice.
It is as persistent as the message that everything is better in Germany. Aggrieved lovers of culture who still (and rightly) detest the breaking up of the status quo by Rutte I's hate policies often shout it.
In one year the AKO and Libris prizes? The front pages of newspapers would be full of it, not to mention the dozens of pages in book supplements. Composer Michel van der Aa has to make do with small announcements, tucked away in newspapers, while receiving the Grawemeyer Award and the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize is a never-before-seen double.
The Cry for Culture with which the Dutch cultural world launched its opposition to the scrapping of art subsidies in 2010 was, in retrospect, a publicity disaster. Perhaps not yet as unfortunate as
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