Documenting Curatorial Practices in Dutch Art Museums, 1945 - Today

Strategies for Making Exhibition History Accessible Online: Three Examples

As a further prelude to the description of the outcomes of our own investigations, it is important to outline some of the strategies already in place for making information on exhibitions available to researchers and the public. In what follows we will outline the international context in which Documenting Curatorial Practices has taken place.

In recent years, the ability to digitize large amounts of data has given a decisive boost to the availability of images and documentary material on the internet. Since the turn of the century, this has led to the rapid development of museum websites. The strain on staff and resources of large-scale digitization projects, however, has meant that most museums have given priority to providing access to the artworks in their collections. In the meantime, though, many museum websites have sections devoted to past exhibitions, although information is usually only available from the period following the institution’s first online forays and is generally limited to photographs and a short description of the show in question. Significantly, efforts to comprehensively digitize exhibition history have almost exclusively been the purview of museums of modern and/or contemporary art with relatively large budgets. More than other museums, these institutions seem to feel the need to explore their own history, viewing it as an important source of information on the canonization of modern art, and in order to create a sense of transparency regarding acquisitions and institutional policy at large.

Among several others, the projects ventured by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris deserve further consideration here.2 The Centre Pompidou’s exhibition history website in particular has been an important source of inspiration for our project thanks to the makers’ remarkable transparency with regard to their preliminary theoretical discussions (see below). In addition to these two large institutions, the Van Abbe Museum (Eindhoven, Netherlands) also deserves particular attention, because of its thorough and comprehensive approach to releasing its archival material. Viewing maximum transparency as an essential part of its overall policy, the Van Abbe Museum has adopted a vanguard position, even from an international perspective, by making not only exhibition photos, but also its management archives available to the public.3

In the first instance, the aforementioned projects have set a standard due to the sheer scope of the material made available, which enables research into every exhibition held since the foundation of all three institutions, in 1929, 1977 and 1936, respectively. As such, they inevitably serve as a benchmark for the methodological decisions museums embarking on similar projects will have to make. Moreover, as a comparison of the architecture of the three sites will reveal, their structure in some sense predetermines the type of research questions one would be likely to raise in relation to both individual exhibitions and exhibition history in general.

In order to understand how MoMA’s exhibition history website came into being, one needs to go back in time to before the birth of the internet as we know it today. In 1995, the museum pioneered in creating rather simple HTML websites for the exhibitions Mutant Material and Video Spaces, not coincidentally exhibitions featuring so-called new media. Since then, more than two hundred websites have been developed to accompany temporary exhibitions. The information provided on these sites resembles that of a press release: in most cases it has a matter-of fact character, as the site is meant to inform and motivate the audience to visit the museum in real time.

The genesis of a more historical approach came in the wake of MoMA’s seventy-fifth anniversary in 2004, which coincided with the reopening of the museum after extensive expansion and renovation. In the publication Art in Our Time, a Chronicle of The Museum of Modern Art,4 the museum looked back on its history through, among other things, the lens of a selection of exhibitions. The title itself references the eponymous exhibition held in 1939 to celebrate MoMA’s move to its then-newly-built quarters on Manhattan’s 57th Street. That show belonged to a series of (now-canonical) surveys organized by Alfred H. Barr, Jr illustrating the various fields of modern art with which the museum had been concerned during the first ten years of its existence. A fundamental criticism of the 2004 retrospective was that the choices made from MoMA’s long and varied exhibition history were rather obvious and limited. In other words: the selection affirmed a long-standing narrative rather than examining the lesser-known threads of the historical fabric.

In September 2006 the Exhibition History web pages went online, with documentation on all the exhibitions held from 1929 to 1989. After years of ‘grooming’ the archives, the site has now been updated and enlarged to include curatorial and registrar’s files,5 with the total number of exhibitions now up to 5,004 (2019), including performances, videos and digital exhibitions. 6 Users will find information on all the participants in the exhibition, lists of works on display, and installation photographs with links to the works in the museum’s collection, and can read press releases as well as catalogues (limited to those now out of print). The database can be searched by decade, year, title or exhibition type. Moreover, the range of search options includes the possibility of a simple text search.7 For example, entering the name ‘William Rubin’ offers up all exhibitions and publications in which the former head of the painting and sculpture department was involved. In addition, the metadata on the exhibitions and collection have been uploaded to GitHub, enabling the social networking community to mine the data with specific research questions. Overall, the resulting data visualizations tend to be more quantitative than qualitative. Examples of these public initiatives include an analysis of the frequency with which an artist has been exhibited (Picasso 321 times and growing), or of the collection by race or gender.8

Notwithstanding the impressive amount of documentary material that has been made available on the MoMA Exhibition History pages, some questions remain. The first search result for an exhibition is always a set of photographs of the installation. This seems to suggest that these images are transparent or neutral recordings; issues such as photographic conventions, the museum’s intentions or the personal interpretation of the photographer(s) are thus not addressed. It goes without saying, however, that photographs fall short in conveying the complexity of an exhibition.9 Moreover, even though the website provides unprecedented opportunities for research, until now the documentation has been limited to the final stage of an exhibition, i.e. to the exhibition as an end product. Close readings of the press releases and checklists may reveal some information regarding the show’s inception and provide some insight into how works were chosen or even the exhibition design, but for deeper insight into the processes of decision-making one still has to turn to MoMA’s physical archive.10

At the same time as MoMA’s Exhibition History pages went online, namely in 2006, the Centre Pompidou established IRI, the Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation du Centre Pompidou. An important spin-off developed in 2010 with the start of the programme Recherche et Mondialisation du Centre Pompidou. A working group involved in this research programme posited that there was a need to acknowledge exhibitions as cultural objects in and of themselves, through which questions of art history could be addressed. On a broader level, the aim was to query the format and nature of exhibitions and how they have been formative actors in the writing of the history of modern art. Centre Pompidou takes a unique position among the three museums discussed here, as it actually provides a methodological underpinning to its project. In line with the reflective character of the research programme, the intellectual assumptions as well as documentation methods are carefully accounted for in a publication.11 A catalogue raisonné of all the Pompidou’s exhibitions served as a starting point – a means of avoiding the canonical. The next step was to design of a kind of checklist, to ensure the consistency and ordering of the available documentation. Filled in fully, the model could encompass as many as forty-two entries, listing every possible aspect related to the exhibition, ranging from factual data to items concerning the concept of the exhibition, the genesis of the installation and all manner of secondary material.12

Unfortunately, it takes quite some inventiveness to actually connect to the Centre Pompidou’s exhibition history portal, as it is not linked to the main museum website. Indeed, two home pages were created, that redirect to each other. The site https://histoiredesexpos.hypotheses.org/ functions as the entrance to the research programme, with a link to articles on special exhibitions or curatorial matters, and links to the current programme (mainly symposiums) and a bibliography. The catalogue raisonné des expositions is accessed via a Wikipedia page, with a further link to the collections of the Pompidou (http://catalogueexpositions.referata.com/wiki/Bienvenue); this site went offline at some time in 2018 but has been reinstated as of 2020. The Wikipedia page can be searched by year, exhibitions series, curators (commissaires), locations (galleries within the physical building) and names of artists. The link to the commissaires in particular is very comprehensive, leading to every exhibition in which these individuals were involved. The name ‘Jean Clair’ – among others former director of the Musée Picasso, curator at the Pompidou, and independent exhibition-maker – for example, delivers a complete survey of the exhibitions he curated at the Centre during his tenure there. Clicking on the link to the seminal exhibition Les Réalismes: entre revolution et reaction, 1919-1939 (1980) reveals the full potential of the descriptive model: in addition to factual data, a list of works and objects on display, the poster, press release and a list of publications and press reviews, a full description of the concept and the scénographie is provided. To aid further research in the physical archives, a list of primary sources and material (correspondence, loan letters, etc.) is provided, as well as a link to installation photographs (in this case 183).

Understandably, it proved impossible to thoroughly document the more than one thousand exhibitions held since 1977. Consequently, although the complete catalogue raisonné was in fact digitized between 2012 and 2015, the amount of information available on individual exhibitions still varies considerably, with priority being given to those shows that generated the most critical discourse. In addition, the continuity of the research blogs has not been guaranteed: the most recent post dates from September 2016. This illustrates once more that continuity is crucial in order for such projects to succeed.

While one would actually have to visit the physical archives of MoMA and the Centre Pompidou in order to get a full picture of the available archival material on any given exhibition, the Van Abbe Museum has made it possible to obtain this information virtually. Over the course of time, it has made both its exhibition (1936-2018) and management archives (1936-1989) available to the general public. An introduction to the digital resources is provided on the museum’s website 13 As a first step, an impression of the scope of the archives and a sense of direction for research topics may be obtained by consulting the links to the summary of all exhibitions and collection presentations held since 1936 (a kind of shortlist catalogue raisonné),14 and by clicking the link to the management archive inventory.15 To continue one’s search, the links to the exhibition archive (connected to the online library catalogue) and to the management archive offer the possibility of exploring these databases through a wide range of keywords. A structural asset is that the two databases redirect to each other, but are also linked to the online library catalogue. As a consequence, one finds primarily factual data on the exhibition archive pages: location, curator, a list of exhibiting artists and exhibited works, captions, gallery texts and a mention of other venues. Links then forward one to archive boxes in the management archives, installation photographs, media (among others YouTube) and in many cases a PDF of the catalogue. Artists’ names direct to other Van Abbe exhibitions they have participated in. The management archive pages offer items on collection and exhibition policy and correspondence, as well as recordings of lectures and symposia. Researching the museum’s involvement with the art of Richard Serra, for example, produces records of three exhibitions. The exhibition archive pages provide material relating to Serra’s solo show 10 Sculptures for the Van Abbe in 1988. Apart from the photographs, the introductory texts and the floor plan provide insight into how the sculptures interacted with the museum architecture. Reference is also made to a video recording of a lecture by the artist. Documents can then be found in the management archives for the year 1988 regarding the intended purchase of T-Junction, one of the works on display’ grant applications for the exhibition (the building needed to be strengthened because of the massive weight of the sculptures) and summary work descriptions. The next time T-Junction was on view was in 2004, during Installations from the Collection (1968-1988). In this case, in addition to photographs of the installations and a list of all the works on display, the site offers the possibility to click on the names of the twelve participating artists for further information, leading to records on their works in the museum. Finally, the 2007 manifestation of the Living Archive series focused, among other things, on the rejection of a work commissioned from Serra for the city of Eindhoven in 1986. This ‘scandal’ would eventually lead to the 1988 solo exhibition.16

Reesa Greenberg has rightly criticized ‘the tendency [within museums] to use analogue principles of construction … even when the platform is digital’, thus repeating past approaches to information disclosure.17. The Van Abbe’s project, however, appears to be the more fundamentally digital when compared to those of MoMA and the Centre Pompidou. Contrary to the long-established manner of ordering information in linear sequence, the Van Abbe site uses digital techniques to their full potential, making it possible to pursue information along rhizomatic paths. This is all the more important as the notion of what an exhibition actually is has been changing rapidly in the last decades, broadening it beyond a spatially confined or time-bound event. More such ‘genuine’ digitization will definitely offer more opportunities to substantiate the site’s current medial and interactive features.

The archive material is diverse, but does allow for some reconstruction of the curatorial process. The presence of a large number of loan request letters is particularly illuminating. These letters make it possible to reconstruct the provenances of various works and provide a picture of who the Dalí collectors were in this period; this is clearly important for work on the artist’s oeuvre, but also for exhibition history. It demonstrates the close connection between the museum and private collectors, and the role they have played in both the institution’s exhibition history and the formation of the collection – to this day an important element in the museum’s DNA.21 More interesting in this regard is that the loan letters reveal the various lenders’ networks, and the interface of these networks with those of the curators. This makes it possible to analyze – to some extent – how the curators (and occasionally the director) operated in getting the works for the exhibition. Particularly interesting is that barely any effort is made to justify the requests: the curator simply states that she is making an exhibition and would like to borrow a certain work. This stands in sharp contrast to practices today. These are invaluable documents for examining curatorial practices in historical context, but they are also highly sensitive: for example, there is quite a large amount of correspondence relating to the potential sale of one of the requested works from a private collection, in which the museum promises its help in the matter; whether or not this was in exchange for agreeing to the loan remains unclear, but the documents reveal – among other things – the price asked and potential interested buyers.22

Another large part of the archive is comprised of newspaper clippings – national and international – which provide insight into the exhibition’s reception, as well as several binders with photographs documenting the installation and the opening – at which Dalí himself was present (which likely accounts for the very extensive documentation of this event). Not in the archive, but easily available on the internet, are also a fragment from the Polygoonjournaal and a much later ArtTube interview with Hammacher in which she discusses the exhibition.23

The available material raises many interesting questions in relation to museum and exhibition practices, some of them specific to this exhibition and to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen but others with a broader import. In terms of the latter, we might think about how this show may have contributed to the growing commercialization of the museum landscape in the Netherlands. Can we see it as a starting point for blockbuster culture and the eventual (slow) withdrawal of the public sector from the museum? In addition, one could look at it from the point of view of the reception of Surrealism in the Netherlands.

Other research questions could contextualize the exhibition with the history of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen itself: what role did exhibitions play in the formation of the collection, in this instance the very important collection of Surrealism? What role did and does this exhibition play in the museum’s self-image, its DNA as an institution? How has it used Dalí throughout its history for projecting a particular image?

For the project as a whole, the research into this particular exhibition was fruitful for the insights it provided into an interesting period of Dutch museum history, when notions about museums and their role in society were changing, and both national and local governments were beginning to contemplate new models for financing cultural institutions. It would make an excellent starting point for comparative research into monographic exhibitions, blockbuster culture and the professionalization of the curator – all important issues when we speak of uncovering vanished curatorial practices.

Peter Greenaway’s exhibition The Physical Self is one of an occasional series of collection presentations prepared under the directorships of Wim Crouwel, Chris Dercon and – most recently Sjarel Ex – by guest curators from both within and beyond the art world. Since 1988 there have been seven such exhibitions, in which the invited curators were given free reign with both the concept and the choice of objects to be displayed. The first four exhibitions, which ran through the 1980s and 1990s, were curated by exhibition-maker Harald Szeemann (1988), theatre director Robert Wilson (1990), filmmaker Peter Greenaway (1991), and the German conceptual artist Hans Haacke (1996). Following a hiatus of several years, stylist Maarten Spruyt was asked to curate De collectie 1 (2007-09) and De collectie 2 (2009-11). This was followed by art historian and professor emeritus of Netherlandish art Peter Hecht’s presentation De collectie verrijkt (2011-15). The most recent manifestation, De collectie als tijdmachine (2017-19), was curated by artist, art critic and art historian Carel Blotkamp.

It is interesting to note the differences between the presentations of the first and second group of guest curators. Those of Szeemann, Wilson, Greenaway and Haacke were billed as temporary exhibitions and lasted only a few months. They were held in the museum’s Bodon Wing – the usual location for temporary exhibitions. All these presentations were a- or transhistorical in nature, and presented objects drawn from all the museum’s various departments. They were arranged according to an authorial concept rather than chronology, and employed sometimes highly innovative display techniques. The presentations curated by Spruyt, Hecht and Blotkamp, on the other hand, were designed to be on view for several years. They were installed in the Van der Steur Building; i.e. where the permanent collection is always on display. These curators all returned to a chronological ordering of the collection. Although many aspects of these installations were interesting (or irritating), their displays aimed to explore the museum’s actual objects in a more common art-historical or museological sense, rather than to express broader, personal ideas.24

Of all the exhibitions, Greenaway’s The Physical Self was by far the most unusual and even controversial. This was in part the result of its subject matter – the human body in all its manifestations throughout the ages – but also of the display, which consisted not only of artefacts, but of actual living human beings: hired models ‘exhibited’ in the nude in glass cases. Not surprisingly, a certain proportion of the archive material is devoted to questions surrounding this rather unusual approach: there is much correspondence with the modelling agency, particularly regarding the remuneration and comfort of the hired models, as well as public reaction in the form of letters to museum officials and newspaper articles.

Unfortunately, the archival material relating to the genesis of the exhibition is once again sparse. In this case, this seems to be largely the result of the use of fax in the communication between the responsible museum curator Piet de Jonge and Peter Greenaway. Although the faxes themselves are preserved, they are mostly illegible. Important (and well preserved) documents in this regard are a fax dating from late 1990 in which Greenaway speaks of an exhibition in the form of a ‘table painting’, letters detailing the filmmaker’s visit to the museum to examine the collection in March 1991, a letter from Greenaway to the curator dated 21 March 1991 in which he lays out his idea for the show and its various themes, with, on the back, some handwritten notes (by the curator?) suggesting possible works from collections, as well as various object lists. A few of the letters and faxes give some insight into the struggles the curator had with the whole project, especially getting Greenaway to respond to his requests for information and to come to Rotterdam. There is also interesting material – particularly photographs – documenting the installation, including a hand-drawn floor plan. Another large part of the archive is comprised of newspaper clippings, which provide insight into the exhibition’s reception. Predictably, these reviews are rather sensationalist, focusing mainly on the theatricality of the exhibition installation and the live models on display.

Like the Dalí exhibition, The Physical Self – together with the other shows in the series – has become an integral part of the museum’s self-image. This is demonstrated by the fact that the concept has remained in place since its inception in 1988, albeit now in somewhat different form. Moreover, the museum has continued to regularly explore various other types of interventions in the collection display itself. This makes the show highly relevant to the museum’s own history: examining all the exhibitions together, as a true series, could prove very fruitful. But Greenaway’s project could also be taken as a starting point for a broader investigation of similar manifestations in other (Dutch) museums. Where have similar exhibitions taken place? What were the themes? How were they received by the public? How has the notion of guest curatorship evolved over the years? Likewise, one could look at the different ways permanent collections have been deployed in exhibitions. To what end have museums put their collections to work through non-traditional displays?

This case study was significant in a number of ways for thinking about a future digital exhibition archive. First, the almost complete deterioration of some of the material is a clear demonstration of the urgent need for some form of preservation; in fact, it may already be too late for much documentation related to exhibitions of the 1990s and early 2000s, before the advent and widespread use of digital forms of communication. Perhaps even more so than in the case of Dalí, it is now apparent that – if one wishes to document actual curatorial practices – the exhibition archive alone is not enough. The exhibition undoubtedly generated much discussion among the museum staff, none of which has been preserved in the archive itself, but may be discovered in minutes of curatorial meetings and similar documents held by other departments.

Where does ‘Dutch’ painting begin? This was the question curators Jeroen Giltaij and Friso Lammertse sought to address with the exhibition Dutch Primitives. Painting from the Late Middle Ages.25 Dutch Primitives can thus be characterized as an exhibition format that presents ground-breaking scientific research. The curators took Max J. Friedländer’s Die altniederländische Malerei (1924-37) as a starting point, which posits that circumstances in the province of Holland around 1500 were favourable to the rise of a distinctive school of painting, distinguishable from the Flemish School but unmistakably based on it. Six cities in particular were viewed as the cradle for this development: Dordrecht, Delft, Gouda, Leiden, Alkmaar and Amsterdam. Bringing together works from different collections in an exhibition offers the perfect opportunity to submit them to a detailed comparative analysis in order to test, and even reject, a variety of hypotheses. In this respect, both the exhibition and the scholarly catalogue were designed to have a hypothetical or argumentative character, and to leave ample room for questioning conclusions.26

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was undoubtedly the most suitable platform for such a project, as it could supply seven key pieces for the exhibition from its own collection. Moreover, at the time the museum was hosting an important temporary loan of so-called Early Netherlandish painting from the Rijksmuseum, then closed for renovation. This combination undoubtedly contributed to the success with international loan requests. One of the research spin-offs – brought to the attention of the public with quite a lot of publicity in the press – was the discovery by the Berlin art historian Stephan Kemperdick that a small painting by Geertgen tot St Jans in the Historisches Museum Frankfurt, clearly a fragment, had once belonged to the artist’s Adoration of the Magi triptych in the Národni Gallery in Prague. Shortly after the opening, the two works were briefly re-united.27

In the course of the preparations, it was decided that the purported realism of the paintings could be underlined by combining them in the show with real objects. A selection of appropriate artefacts from the museum’s collection was made by Alexandra Gaba-Van Dongen, curator of preindustrial design. The paintings proved to be quite accurate in their renderings, so that in many cases the they could be linked to extant objects – many of which could be found in the museum’s own collection.28

The exhibition was organized into six sections, each representing an important city; this division was visualized by Studio Ramin Visch using a zigzag-like infrastructure of coloured walls. Each city was given its own wall in a different colour, for example yellow for Leiden and dark blue for Haarlem. Visch derived the colour range from Mary with Jesus and four Holy Virgins, a work by the master of the Virgo inter Virgines from the Rijksmuseum. The use of colour in this late medieval painting thus determined the aesthetic choice. The position of the walls, which varied in length and height, guided the visitor through the show, although following this path was not mandatory. One could also wander freely, as if to underline the equality of the six cities, but also perhaps as an allusion to the hypothetical character of the exhibition.

The three-dimensional objects were displayed in niches that opened in the walls, usually next to the painting in which they were depicted. These showcases provided glimpses to other walls (and cities) and prevented the setup from becoming too rigid. Whether the designer’s intention to ‘present the works and objects as a mystery’ was also realized remains an open question. Even the link made with medieval art in the colour scheme may not have been perceived by the audience, as such strong colours are also very contemporary. In any case, the design certainly favoured the precise and intimate viewing that this kind of art requires.29

A large amount of archival material is available, documenting almost all phases of the exhibition’s realization.30 It encompasses loan correspondence, minutes of curatorial meetings, correspondence on the catalogue, checklists of objects and drafts for the exhibition design, as well as a brochure on its final form, data concerning the budget and sponsorship and publicity, wall texts, labels or captions, educational material for schools, photographs of the mounting process and final installation, press clippings and – finally – an internal evaluation. This enables us to thoroughly reconstruct the conceptualization of the exhibition as well as its reception, and a number of conclusions may be drawn regarding changes that occurred during the preparations.

The curatorial minutes of 23 March 2007, about a year before the opening, for example, indicate that at that time it had already been decided that the presentation would be arranged according to city. Variations on ‘The Origins of’ circulated as titles. Among the suggestions we also find ‘Dutch Painting’ or ‘Dutch Painting from Geertgen tot St Jans to Lucas van Leyden’. In light of the definitive title, it seems that later on it was thought advisable to be somewhat vaguer. As for the exhibition design, the preference at the time was for a monastic atmosphere, described as ‘in the spirit of Dom Hans van der Laan’. There was as yet no mention of objects other than paintings.31 An undated note (presumably from a slightly later date) suggests the inclusion of three-dimensional artefacts, albeit in a separate gallery, such as the introductory room.32 In the end, as described above, they were indeed integrated into the exhibition. On 9 November 2007 Visch presented his first proposal for the installation. Giltaij and Lammertse objected to the long walls proposed, arguing that they would reduce the paintings to the size of postage stamps. They also asked for breaks in the walls, as well as for the possibility to show the backs of the paintings, as these often provide interesting information. It was also at this meeting that the final title was chosen. Unfortunately, such reports were not made on a regular basis, or at least have not been systematically archived, making it impossible to trace why specific solutions were chosen. Was the integration of the three-dimensional intended as a means of reaching a wider audience? Was there a fear that the formal language of the paintings and their symbolism might prove inaccessible otherwise? Interviews with the curators might still provide some clarity in this regard.

On the other hand, there is very thorough reporting in 2007 and 2008 on financial and organizational aspects, on education and public programmes.33 In addition to educational courses for different school levels, a symposium was organized for the general public at the start of the exhibition, as well as an experts meeting at its closure.34 In the final evaluation report, the educational programme and the gallery texts are assessed positively, but it was noted that the catalogue did not fit well with the exhibition – an indication of some possible friction between public outreach and scholarly ambition.35 The majority of the comments concern the restricted budget and the failure to raise outside funds. In the end, the costs were about 100,000 euros higher than expected.36

With regard to the writing of exhibition histories, it would first of all be relevant to examine how Dutch Primitives aligns with the policy successive directors of the museum have followed over the years with regard to its pre-modern art department. Indeed, the leeway granted to the Old Master curators to organize exhibitions and make acquisitions has differed from director to director. Programming in the past decade indicates that the museum has focused to a much greater extent than before on its core collection of older art, parallel to its profiling of the Surrealists. Announced as a follow-up to Dutch Primitives, The Road to Van Eyck, for example, was staged in 2012-13 to stimulate research into an even earlier period in art history.37 The ambitious set-up of this exhibition – a marriage between a blockbuster and a scholarly project – was once again made possible thanks to the museum’s owning several key works, in particular The Three Marys at the Grave by the Van Eyck brothers, and the anonymous Norfolk Triptych. Moreover, The Road to Van Eyck triggered three important purchases of works that had been on display and had proven their relevance to the collection in that setting. Two triptychs were acquired in 2013 and 2018 and a drawing attributed to the circle of Jan van Eyck in 2014.38 This shows how beneficial the synergy between exhibition programming and acquisition policy can be.

Further, a study of the broader context of canonization might be undertaken. What changes can one point out in the museum’s history with regard to its valuation of late medieval painting? And how does this relate to the exhibition and acquisition policies of other museums in the Netherlands? Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen itself mentions Medieval Art of the Northern Low Countries – a famous and ground-breaking exhibition organized in 1958 by the Rijksmuseum – as a precursor to Dutch Primitives.39 This seems to indicate a shift in focus between the two museums, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen concentrating on early painting, leaving the Dutch Golden Age more or less to the Rijksmuseum’s expertise.

The Road to Van Eyck demonstrates yet another tendency that was already visible in 2008, namely the use of a digital environment for preserving the memory of the exhibition. While there is only a short text on Dutch Primitives on the museum’s website, The Road to Van Eyck is more extensively chronicled, with a short description, photographs of the exhibits and links to several videos on ARTtube relating to the exhibition.40 In fact, this can be seen as a kind of forerunner to an eventual website on exhibition history, with the caveat that the tone at the moment is exclusively positive and missing critical reflection.

Hand Made - Long Live Crafts is arguably the most intricately designed exhibition in the museum’s history. This was due not only to the astonishing number of objects shown (more than six hundred), but primarily to the innovative and multifaceted participatory exhibition format. In Hand Made, curator of applied art and design Mienke Simon Thomas sought to interrogate received ideas about the applied arts, in particular the valuation of (traditional) craftsmanship. This was addressed through seven so-called stereotypes or clichés, values generally associated with handicraft and crafts in general. Each of these stereotypes was illustrated with objects dating from all periods, some from the museum’s collection, others on loan. Rejecting the conventional design-history narrative, the transhistorical and high-and-low juxtaposition of objects underlined the exhibition’s aim to question judgments and labels. Hand Made can therefore be characterized as an exploration of a new type of exhibition, one that defines the museum not as an authority but instead seeks to involve the audience in an open discussion. As we will see, this expansion of the concept ‘exhibition’ also has consequences for the method of archiving, and thus for its accessibility in an exhibition history repository.

The objective of engaging visitors in the actual process of making was concretized in an extensive and diverse complementary public programme, using a wide variety of media, live performances and events. For example, videos showed how a number of the objects on display had been made, while a specially designed studio hosted demonstrations of traditional techniques such as paper-making, goldsmithing, violin-making and weaving. In addition, it was possible to sign up for a whole variety of workshops, visit a handicraft market or join in a design contest. A free exhibition newspaper included – in addition to a discussion of the seven stereotypes – columns by the curator, modern designers and opinion-makers. Information for the public and calls for participation were listed in a calendar of all public activities.

Archival material and recordings on the exhibition are abundant, and enable us to follow the genesis of the exhibition to a certain extent. Simon Thomas introduced her idea to director Sjarel Ex in 2011, possibly inspired by Perry’s exhibition in London.42 As evidenced by an initial plan,43 Simon Thomas conceived the show from the outset in seven parts or stereotypes, each exemplified by objects. This plan is undated but in view of the then-limited number of 200 (!) objects proposed, it must have been drafted at an early stage. As with Dutch Primitives, the archive contains mainly detailed information on the execution stage of the exhibition. Minutes of curatorial meetings, documents on the budget, tenders, applications for funds, loan requests, condition reports, detailed building plans – taken together these illustrate once again that putting together an exhibition has become a team effort for which the expertise of many is required. With regard to the participatory design of the exhibition, the detailed plans of the Marketing and Communication (M&C) and Education and Public Guidance (E&P) departments are worth special consideration. Apart from the preparatory phase, these departments were involved during the entire duration of the exhibition. After all, Hand Made was not an exhibition that was ‘finished’ once it opened, but rather an ongoing project that kept these departments involved, undoubtedly to a greater extent than has been the case with other exhibitions.

It must have been quite difficult for Studio Parade to figure out how to accommodate so many objects, some of them very small, in the spacious 1,500 square metres of the Bodon Wing. Unlike the hanging of paintings, which allows for last-minute changes, the display of three-dimensional objects requires accurate calculation of the exact location of each object, either in showcases or on pedestals. It must also have been rather mind-boggling to deal with the ever-growing number of objects: the definite list was not fixed until December 2012.44 A first proposal for the installation, dated 17 September 2012, gives two alternatives, with variations on a grid for showcases and pedestals. The final installation plan dates from 12 February 2013, but many adjustments were made in between, as the available archive material shows.

For a broader context, it would be of interest to investigate how Hand Made fits into the policy of the museum and its design department. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is the only museum with a collection that covers the timespan from the Middle Ages up to the present day. As a consequence, it may feel authorized to profile itself along these lines within the Dutch museum world. To this end, it launched the ‘Programme Design,’ which organizes activities (including lectures and a design column) and exhibitions, with the aim of stimulating the debate about the place of design in society. In this regard, Hand Made certainly does not stand on its own: rather, its activating and participatory character runs through the museum’s programming. In this case, Hand Made responded to the current renewed appreciation of materials and craft in society. Crafts are hot, as evidenced, for example, by the popularity of Etsy.com.

To conclude, Hand Made demonstrates that different exhibition formats may demand different digitizing strategies. To do justice to the show’s participatory character, material should be included on the studios, the workshops and the craft market, preferably even using video recording. It should be noted as well that including exhibition reviews in this case also requires a novel approach. Whereas for most exhibitions a selection of reviews from the main newspapers would suffice, with Hand Made the bulk of press clippings is essential in researching the scope of the exhibition. These show that to a significant extent coverage took place in the popular and local press as well as on the internet. A striking example is the mention in De Bunschoter huis aan huis, a newspaper for a quite traditional local community, on their ‘ambassadors of craft’, women who came from this little village to show off their skills in the museum.45