Honourable members of the House of Representatives, It is with great concern that we look at the Temporary Test Act that will be voted on in your House on Tuesday 11 May. This new law means even more hurdles and restrictions for visiting culture. Restrictions that will be introduced but where the end date is not given. This new testing law could be a godsend for...
On Saturday 2 December, Australian-Dutch composer Kate Moore (b 1979) will receive the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize for her composition The Dam. The prize money is €20,000, made available by the Performing Arts Fund. The prize was established in 1972 and named after the Dutch composer and critic Matthijs Vermeulen (1888-1967). Until now, it invariably went to men, some even getting it two...
'Happy Birthday Marilyn' is the name of the new exhibition at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. As soon as you enter, the saint worship begins, with a metre-high image of Marilyn Monroe in the famous billowing dress. High up in the ridge of the side aisle. The tone is set: The New Church provides a stage for the icon of the 1950s, an eternally beautiful...
Diversity in the Amsterdam art world is not yet flourishing. The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, which announced its grant awards today, is getting a bit tired of it: "Across most disciplines, committees note that cultural diversity of audiences, staff and governance is disappointing, as are efforts to change this. Outside specialised organisations for which cultural diversity is a core business, ambitions are still not high, despite two decades of cultural policy in this area. If the ambitions are there, organisations do not always manage to give them hands and feet. There often seems to be a certain discomfort or 'not knowing how'."
So to start with the good news: Marmoucha grows 398 per cent compared to the previous grant round. The capital's producer and promoter of performing arts in the field of North African and Middle Eastern arts and culture in the Netherlands was severely cut back in 2013, but the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts found its work over the past four years to be so good that the grant has been more than deserved. In the new round of awards which became known on 1 August they rise from 25,070 euros to a tonne, adding that perhaps they should not be so ambitious.
The man with the firm jaws and vacant, upward-looking eyes is not particularly attractive. His face does appear on all the posters around town. However, it is something other than this robust stone head against the black background that triggers you, on the poster of the exhibition at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. That is the tilted O of the...
Last Thursday, there was another consultation in The Hague about Jo Coenen's new cultural complex. Opponents wanted to get the plans off the table, which at this stage could no longer be done. But a striking argument was that this cultural palace would never be among the renowned concert halls because it lacks an organ. A fallacy or a major problem? The construction of the Education and Culture Complex...
They are each other's opposites: Michiel Borstlap exudes luxury and relaxation, Micha Hamel a tense frown. But the two not inconsiderable gentlemen have both recently joined the Academy of Arts. They played new work last weekend and I spoke to them afterwards. Actually, I was programming Michiel Borstlap's concert for a theatre in Driebergen. In an expensive Jaguar, we drove to a restaurant for coffee...
How to visit an art museum? Johan Idema, consultant, cultural entrepreneur and advocate of innovation in the art world, has written a book about it: 'How to visit an art museum'. He thinks there is room for improvement and change. And that after reading his book, people will experience their museum visits differently and especially better. And of course: that museums will also have the...
Gorkum - Culture sector is in dire straits (...) The major austerity exercise will come in spring when the new Culture Policy, among others, is on the table. (...) In the meantime, further consultations are being held with cultural bodies, among others, such as the Toon Foundation and the Nieuwe Doelen theatre on 30 January. "They, like the Gorcums Museum, can come up with innovative, cost-saving plans....
(...) The Youth Theatre School Roosendaal received a project subsidy of 36,779 euros from the municipality in 2010 and 2011. The school also fulfils a regional function. Forty per cent of its 330 pupils come from the surrounding villages. The proposal is to end the subsidy from 1 January. It was only this week that this apparently dawned on Hofplein's management. Which immediately started a...
Trouw's commentary addresses the problems that are now beginning to be felt even at the top of the arts sector: Cultural entrepreneurship can produce great things. Ernst Veen, who brought De Nieuwe Kerk and Hermitage Amsterdam to great fruition as new exhibition spaces in the capital, is a successful example. Yesterday, he complained in Trouw that...
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