Leiden University Student Repository

Schouten, Hanna (2016)

De Stijl - from Amsterdam to New York. The (re) presentation of De Stijl in the historical retrospective De Stijl exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1951) and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1952-53)

Master thesis | Arts and Culture (MA)

The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Modern Art in New York played a significant role in the assimilation of De Stijl into the canon of modern art as an important and influential modern art movement through the construction of institutionalized narratives. The historical retrospective De Stijl exhibition, shown in the Stedelijk Museum in 1951 and in the Museum of Modern Art in 1952-53 was an important instrument with which both museums produced and distributed narrative histories of De Stijl and contributed to the canonization of De Stijl. The aim of this research is to analyze the retrospective De Stijl exhibition and a selective number of preceding exhibitions organized by both museums in the period from 1932 to 1946 as narrative environments and spaces of representation in answer to the question what narrative histories of De Stijl were produced and with what narrative elements and devices these narratives were produced.

De Stijl

exhibitions

MoMA New York

the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

canonization

representation

Author

Schouten, Hanna

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

art of the contemporary world and world art studies

Supervisors

Leigh, M.A.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en