Berlin's Gorki Theatre won a prize this year: it was named the best theatre in the German language area by the German-language press. The company won the award partly because it employs many actors of immigrant origin. With its performance Der Untergang der Nibelungen, which can be seen in this year's Holland Festival, the group also thematises the...
Everything comes together in Enschede. Revenue models that appear to be based on air, but are defended to the hilt by administrators. Jubilant reports on rising museum visits, but smaller museums are going under. Aldermen acting out of cultural interests, but then playing residents against each other to make draconian decisions. All this to disguise the ruins of Rutte I. A quick recap:...
HET Symfonieorkest's financial problems have not gone unnoticed. Regional newspaper Tubantia reported last Monday that PvdA MP Jacques Monasch had minister Jet Bussemaker (also PvdA) summoned to the Lower House. In that report, Monasch passes with seven-mile boots advice, applications and decisions that have already been made or are yet to come, and immediately reports that a symphony orchestra will continue to be...
The money at HET Symphony Orchestra has run out. Despite all the extra millions from the province and after years of writing off tons of general reserves, the end is in sight. And so the orchestra is scrapping concerts, will be seen less in theatres in Deventer and Zwolle, stops CD recordings and shuns any risky performances. To keep the...
They couldn't have picked a better time, there in Groningen. Because who do you call, when an overambitious theatre director has just blown the coffers of the once illustrious Grand Theatre dry, a Supervisory Board has been napping and then 22 people have been sacked because the money has run out? Then you're looking for someone with experience of that. Preferably...
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 reported that today
Ukraine, Boko Haram, IS, the economic crisis. The world resembles a borderline patient, as Ricardo Semler states. Dance festival CaDance also likes to hold a mirror up to politicians and power. With Exhausting Space by Spanish choreographer Iván Pérez succeeds just fine.
Film and film criticism. Image versus the word. But what happens when the critic starts using visual language too? Well, something like this, for example: Transformers: The Premake, by Kevin B. Lee. Romance or amour fou It seems so obvious in today's digital online world. Is the video essay an answer to the crisis, perceived or otherwise, in art criticism? Film critics...
Art ends its 70th anniversary as a 'Leftist Hobby' in 2015. There is not much more to predict for this year. Art goes back to the bourgeois status it held since the start of the industrial revolution. 1: Art was never left Art, of course, has never been 'left'. Subsidy may have come from the thinking tubes of social and Christian democrats, but art an sich...
Previously, her performance allowed her to think heartbreakingly through love, infatuation and heartbreak. Now her performance is about love in the broadest possible sense. Earlier, she made theatre in which she wrestled with questions. Now she shows that struggle much less and shares the answers she has found with the audience. Earlier, she could still claim...
"Grand opening, right?" Jeffrey Meulman, the man who as director of the ailing Theatre Festival gave the word "inspired" a new dimension, was delighted. It was Thursday night, September 4, 2014. Shortly before, I had seriously considered jumping from the 1st balcony of the Stadsschouwburg, rather than applauding Tauerbach, the opening performance of The Theatre Festival. It is...
Culture minister Jet Bussemaker can again make up for the cultural devastation caused by her predecessor Halbe Zijlstra. As promised earlier, money will be freed up for talent development. That was a demand of the chamber and a wish of the country. Are we happy? Of course. Although happy, there are also a few things that remain troublesome. [Tweet "1 Develop...
He is the greatest director in the Netherlands. But also the least honourable theatre-maker we know: Johan Simons. The man whose star has been rising since the 1980s is now in Munich. But he is not staying there. After putting the local company Kammerspiele even more firmly on the map internationally, he is looking for new challenges. Den Bosch earlier reported...
Do you remember? The band-aid Halbe Zijlstra offered the cultural sector in the form of the Giving Act? Tax breaks would definitely lead to more sponsorship, so the impact of the austerity measures would not be nearly as dramatic as the sector itself cried out.
Even before the Holland Festival had begun properly, all tickets for the three performances of Handel's Orlando sold. What a crisis. However, it is not hard to guess why.
370 million cost to renovate the Rijksmuseum. All but a tonne. 5.5 million less than the last estimate from 2010. Which again it was almost quadruple the original budget, which still assumed 134 million. But that was before the crisis about those stairs and that cycle route, and before all kinds of construction companies went bankrupt, and before the whole thing was in danger of collapsing anyway.
It was ball in Rotterdam on Thursday, 30 January. At the Municipal Culture Congress, a few hundred officials, local politicians and arts organisations gathered to talk about where they could help each other. It was supposed to be a positive day. There had been long enough complaining and arguing: look ahead, hopeful into the future. Even if the worst is yet to come.
"Don't listen to the experts, they are actually always wrong." The gist of 'Eyes wide open', Noreena Hertz's latest book, is clear. That she is an expert herself, and therefore her views should be distrusted, makes sense. That the conversation she had on the subject with former politician Femke Halsema became increasingly bizarre was not so logical. Downright shocking was the fall that the terror of all the world's bankers took at the end.
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.
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.
Wonderful quote in the Volkskrant, also copied by the ANP in the message feeds on Ann Goldstein's departure as artistic director of hert Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Or vice versa. Just read carefully:
The Performing Arts Promotion Office which will be disbanded from 1 October, has not fallen victim to cultural cuts or the economic crisis. The Stichting Promotie Theater- en Concertbezoek (SPTC), the BPP's backer, has turned off the money tap for other, unclear reasons.
We are far from having all the info, but we have enough by now: the Bureau Promotie Podiumkunsten (BPP), funded by the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Managements, is quitting as of 1 October. Reason unknown, but surely the malaise in the cultural sector, and especially the performing arts, will have something to do with it.
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.
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
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