NEW PUBLICATION
Szine #2
Cultural Diplomacy: Reflecting on Present Institutional Mechanisms and Speculating on Alternative Cultural Practice
S(tedelijk)zine is an irregularly published zine that shares pressing research on the subjectivity of the museum in the cultural landscape. Together with Stedelijk Studies—the online platform that sets out to expand the online peer-reviewed Stedelijk Studies Journal—Szine is a catalyst that brings research into aesthetic, ethical, or social issues at the Stedelijk to a wider audience. A limited print run is on sale at the museum shop, and it is free online as a PDF in English or Dutch.
Szine #2 came together around our hope to critically evaluate how art institutions in times of conflict can be spaces or tools for cultural exchange and diplomacy, as sanctuaries and sites to imagine transformative political horizons.
Left: Umbrellas left behind after tear-gas firing during protests in Hong Kong, September 29, 2019, photograph by Eric Tsang, “White Terror” series.
Right: Long-exposure photograph of protestors at Hong Kong Space Museum using laser pointers following the arrest of a student for possessing several of these devices, which the police called an “offensive weapon” in Hong Kong, August 7, 2019, photograph by Eric Tsang, “Language of the Unheard” series.
For Szine #2, during two roundtables Stedelijk Studies invited artists, cultural workers, and academics from different backgrounds to speculate on the past of institutions and their futures under statist frameworks. Adam Szymczyk, documenta 14 artistic director and the Stedelijk’s curator-at-large, led the first of these in which art history academic Lisa Ito, architect and visual artist Yazan Khalili and head of Kiev’s Visual Culture Research Center Vasyl Cherepanyn discussed the paradox of the “neutral institution” given the reactive response artistic practices have to national cultural policies. On-the-ground perspectives from the Philippines, Palestine, and Ukraine provided insight into the agency of solidarity movements in the museum context.
Left: Poster of “Allied—Kyiv Biennial 2021” in a chair, 2021, photograph by Oleksandr Kovalenko. Courtesy of Vasyl Cherepanyn.
Center: Poster of “Strategic Plan 2020—2018”, 2018, prepared by Yara Abdel Hamid and illustrated by Basel Nasr. © Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah.
Right: University students and other visitors look inside Museo Lumad: Land, Culture, Life, a museum that showcases the history, land, and culture of the Lumad indigenous people from southern Philippines, 2016, photograph by Karlo Mongaya.
The second roundtable also had a plurality of voices, this time from Russia, Turkey, and the Netherlands. Cultural studies professor Keti Chukhrov, architect Merve Bedir, and artist and propaganda researcher Jonas Staal engaged in a conversation supported by stateless and transterritorial theory that involved consideration of alternative structures for cultural production.
Left: The New World Embassy: Rojava was a temporary embassy built in the Oslo City Hall that represented the principles of “stateless democracy” practiced in northern Syria by the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava. The embassy is a collaborative project between the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava and Studio Jonas Staal commissioned by the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale After Belonging and co-produced by KORO (Public Art Norway/URO), photograph by Istvan Virag.
Right: Cosmology map of the “Kitchen Workshop”, a hospitality collective of women from Turkey and Syria that want to live together, illustrated by Merve Bedir.
To learn about our contributors’ experiences, we invite you to download a free digital copy of the second issue. As always, it is available in English and Dutch:
Szine #1
Szine #1: Future Origins: Tracing the Stedelijk’s Financial Foundations—and How to Respond to Them Today
Szine #1:
tracing the Stedelijk’s financial foundations–and how to respond to them today
The Stedelijk Museum concludes its 125th anniversary with the publication of the inaugural Szine, commissioning cultural historian Nancy Jouwe to research the cultural and financial circumstances of the museum’s founding. While it is common knowledge that wealthy local citizens first established the Stedelijk to house modern and contemporary art and design, less is known about the source of that wealth—though conjecture now abounds. With the title “The Stedelijk: A Museum in Imperial Amsterdam”, Jouwe places the Stedelijk in the late nineteenth century, and details how wealth from colonized countries was used to project an aura of cultural discernment, aided by Amsterdam’s ambitious city council. An interview between the Stedelijk’s curator-at-large Yvette Mutumba and director Rein Wolfs further expands on Jouwe’s commission, and the future of the museum. We advise reading in tandem with the editorial by Mutumba and Maurice Rummens in Stedelijk Studies Journal #11 on the museum’s material history and the current social environment of European museums.
For its inaugural issue, the Stedelijk commissioned cultural historian Nancy Jouwe to conduct research into the cultural and financial circumstances surrounding the founding of the museum. It is common knowledge that a group of wealthy local citizens founded the Stedelijk as a museum of modern and contemporary art and design. However, not much was known about the origin of their funds, and in which cultural-historical and colonial context this took place; at the same time, there have been recent conjectures and speculations about this.
Besides the article by Nancy Jouwe, the Szine also contains an interview between Yvette Mutumba, curator-at-large at the Stedelijk, and director Rein Wolfs. Together, they talk about Jouwe’s findings, and the future of the museum.
With the title ‘The Stedelijk: A Museum in Imperial Amsterdam’, Jouwe places the Stedelijk Museum in the cultural-historical context of the late 19th century. She describes how the wealth gained in colonized countries was used to project an aura of cultural discernment, aided and endorsed by an ambitious city council government. Jouwe’s article can be read in tandem with the editorial by Maurice Rummens, in Stedelijk Studies Journal issue 11, on the material history of the museum, and the editorial by Yvette Mutumba on the current European social environment of museums.
Rein Wolfs:
“In the past year, because of ongoing challenges related to the pandemic, we could not celebrate our 125th anniversary in the way we would have liked. However, we were able to look back on our institution in a variety of ways. It is essential that a museum of modern and contemporary art and design also draws on the past to gain deeper insights into the present. Research for our recent exhibition on the work of the Expressionists Kirchner and Nolde, and a contribution by artist Timo Demollin on the International Colonial and Export Trade Exhibition on Museumplein in 1883 for the exhibition In the Presence of Absence, were the impetus for this first Szine. We are delighted that we are now able to provide answers to a broader range of questions.”
Charl Landvreugd, Head of Research and Curatorial Practices at the Stedelijk:
“With each Szine, we aim to create a different awareness relating to the Stedelijk’s approach to aesthetic, ethical and social issues inside, and outside, the museum walls. For which research plays a fundamental role. In the first Szine, Nancy Jouwe examines the big picture, scrupulously shedding light on the context and era in which the Stedelijk originated. Her perspective, combined with the conversation between Rein and Yvette about the present and the future, equips us with a broad view of the museum, and ways in which we can use this knowledge to create a balanced, contemporary museum awareness.”
