'A beautiful gift to the city'- this is how the Hartwig Art Foundation describes on its website the plan to initiate a new art museum on the Zuidas. It is a private initiative by entrepreneur, art collector and philanthropist Rob Defares. The Amsterdam Arts Council has advised positively on the plan, with the municipality deciding on it soon. It sounds promising: an art hall - there will be no...
The support cultural organisations receive from the government seems generous, but we can add some nuance to this. This is because if a local authority gives emergency support to a museum, support is then set off against the National Enterprise Scheme (NOW).
Nederland is niet groot genoeg voor twee grote musicalproducenten. Dat is de enige conclusie die getrokken kan worden uit het vertrek van Albert Verlinde bij Stage Entertainment.
Verontrustende berichten, de afgelopen dagen, in diverse media. Eerst was daar Patrick van IJzendoorn in De Volkskrant, die constateerde dat het leven was weggetrokken uit het Londense zakenhart. Ik zag een paar verward verheugde reacties langskomen van vrienden op mijn culturele tijdlijn. Immers, in het artikel werd een duidelijke relatie gelegd tussen de sluiting van musea en theaters en de…
In the second half of the 1980s, when Wim Deetman was still a cheese soufflé and many Utrechters of my age wore kletter vests with broken rifles, it was very easy to know what you were against. This was because of a few clear principles: anyone on the right was bad. Christians were stupid, hypocritical and scary. Anyone who rented real estate...
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...
A fortnight ago, we reported that the unique open-air theatre group Vis à Vis had started a petition. Reason: the Almere city council was reportedly planning to convert the company's permanent site on Almere beach into a residential area. This would go against an earlier promise made by the alderman. Since that alderman has since ceased to be an alderman, it would...
Schokkende mail, vanmiddag. Theatergroep Vis à Vis, het gezelschap dat op het strand bij Almere al heel wat jaren heel fijn openluchtspektakels maakt, zou over een kleine maand weg moeten van hun net gebouwde onderkomen. Tenminste, zo lijkt het. Lees de tekst van het noodbericht: ‘Na 10 jaar onzekerheid heeft Vis à Vis te horen gekregen van het college van…
The art world needs to be more entrepreneurial. The VVD thinks so, D66 thinks so, in fact the entire Lower House thinks so. But how do you get that combined with the 'intrinsic value' that the last two culture ministers say it should also be about? The Council for Culture has now, in response to a question from minister Ingrid van Engelshoven in March last...
![M carbunaru [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons](https://cultureelpersbureau.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Vasile_Craciun_-_competitie_internationala.jpg)
How nice it would be if Zutphen were to be Cultural Capital of the Netherlands next year, proudly representing itself and thanks to a strong impulse from its surrounding area: the province of Gelderland. They could immediately tackle the hopeless situation of the local theatre, the kids from the suburbs could also go to hip-hop in a real hall and everyone in the Netherlands would know...
One of the great things about France is that it is not raked. On any bike ride, or walk along that overgrown path that started out so beautifully, you might just bump into a ruin. Such a ruin that we here in the Netherlands would soon turn into an attraction, if we hadn't long since demolished the piece of unattended real estate to make way for...
Leisure is the mother of philosophy. -motto by British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, seen in Klokgebouw during STRP17 An app called "Die with me" that, as soon as your smartphone is at five per cent remaining power, automatically connects with other Die with me users. An app game called "Airb'n'bhost", where you have to choose who offers the airb'n'b interior from three portrait photos each time. The most fun:...
It will be the big task for companies and interest clubs in culture for 2016: how do we improve the image of 'the sector'? Next year - I predict - no expense will be spared to improve the culture sector's image. There will probably also be a study on how to improve that image. This...
2014 was the year of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, award-winning stage adaptation by Ivo van Hove. This year, that performance has been outstripped by 'Passions Humaines', written by Erwin Mortier, magisterially designed by Guy Cassiers. Again at the Holland Festival, confirming its place as a stage for the great debate on art. Two plays in which architecture, artistry and...
At Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg, Hans Kesting will once again play the title role of Shakespeare's Othello, in a legendary version by top director Ivo van Hove, already 12 years ago. A stone's throw away, at De Balie, is the equally impressive actor Kenneth Herdigein in David Mamet's play Race. Why connect the two? Hans Kesting, the...
Last week, the Metaalkathedraal was celebrating. This 'creative breeding ground' in the picturesque no man's land between Utrecht and Leidsche Rijn can, thanks to a loan from a bank, grow into something that might become great fun for the neighbourhood, but also for people on the other side of town. The Metal Cathedral is an initiative of two artists. They...
Two corpses. Despairing bystanders. A blood-red photo. The cover of the Exploration, released by the Amsterdam Arts Council, makes one fear the worst. A massacre has been committed. Even if it is a scenic photo of a performance by Toneelgroep Amsterdam. Or is it all different? Are only two dead, and the rest live on? Something about shows that on must go?....
Wijbrand Schaap: 'Just one more point. Then we're almost through.' Joop Daalmeijer: 'Continue quietly, we have until half past five.' Wijbrand Schaap: 'We have a problem with real estate. A lot of inner cities are empty. Shop premises are empty, downtown office buildings are unrentable. What do the municipalities say? Put artists in them. Cost nothing, because for free rent they do...
Minister Bussemaker vindt het nog veel te vroeg om alarm te slaan over de bezuinigingen die gemeentes nog gaan doorvoeren op cultuur. Onderzoeksbureau Berenschot had earlier this year berekend dat er nog vele procenten van het lokale cultuurbudget af zouden gaan. Onze eigen bronnen vertelden dat Berenschot nog aan de zonnige kant zat. Volgens de minister is het onderzoek echter te beperkt: er is maar onder 65 gemeentes gecheckt, en bovendien is het nog veel te vroeg.
Theatre company the Utrecht Games, city company of the Netherlands' fourth largest city, is on the brink of bankruptcy. It was recently revealed that the company led by artistic and business director Jos Thie has a deficit of €2.1 million. Correspondence that has since surfaced shows that it was already clear in May this year that the problems were getting out of hand. That was a month after the Utrecht subsidy advisory committee issued its laudatory opinion, and a few weeks before the Council for Culture issued its very thrifty advice.
Je kunt je kont tegen de krib gooien, als kunstsector, maar je kunt ook iets anders doen, terwijl je met je grote konijnenogen in de koplampen van een aanstormend kaalslagmonster staart. En wat is dat andere dan, vroeg de Amsterdamse kunstraad zich af? Doodknuffelen, was het antwoord. Toen de Amsterdamse wethouder van Cultuur vorige week haar plan ontvouwde voor de…
Letters from Culture Secretary Zijlstra are dangerous, especially when they are about figures and schemes. And we haven't seen the latest one for now. So right now, it is about 'friction costs' for the cultural sector. These are the costs that subsidised institutions have to incur when their existence ends due to the subsidy freeze. Think redundancy payments, damages, flower arrangements for funerals of suicides and selling real estate at a loss.
It came as a shock that still hasn't quite worked out. Haf September, dozens of arts organisations received a letter from the State Secretary for Culture, informing them that they could start using the subsidy they thought they were getting for projects until 31 December 2012 for redundancy procedures, selling property at a loss and staff lawsuits against...
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