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…

narrative fallacy and a fridge magnet

At the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Between 1880 and 1890 Vincent Van Gogh produced over 2000 artworks, and, so the story goes, died in poverty and mental illness, never having sold anything. Thereafter his genius was gradually discovered and he was acknowledged as a key figure in the history of art. Tortured and misunderstood…