urban futures – the cultural field

For nearly ten years I have been serving on the International Advisory Board in Rotterdam [Link] – offering comment on the city’s life and plans. This year we turned to culture in the city. A group of us joined a year long process to reach out to stakeholder groups and institutions, to the people of…

the future of the museum

The new Collections Depot for Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam is under construction. I visited a couple of weeks ago and had a chat with Sjarel Ex, Director of Boijmans. This is opening the doors of the museum and gallery in a new way – all 150,000 items in the collection will be…

materiality of the invisible

Yesterday I had the great honor to open a remarkable exhibition of artworks at the Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht – multiform institute for fine art, design and reflection Curators: Lex ter Braak, Director of Van Eyck and Huib Haye van der Werf, Head of Artistic Program. The exhibition runs through The Van Eyck Academie, Marres,…

Update – Summer 2017

July 2017. While over the last few months I’ve neglected posting my ideas, thoughts, news and commentary here at mshanks.com, I’ve had a fascinating series of encounters with some wonderful people, organizations and businesses. And I am preparing some posts – I greatly value the process of logging this learning journey I am so lucky…

Pop-up museum – cars – the power of less

Mobilizing the past Project: Future of the Past – [Link]Project: Future of Mobility – [Link]Project: JANUS Initiative – [Link] With the extraordinary Mark Gessler of the Historic Vehicle Association of America in the presentation of a pop-up museum of automotive history. Three cars sat in an exhibition for a week in Manhattan in the run…