In this day and age it is of vital importance for museums to be socially inclusive and relevant for their communities. The Haags Historisch Museum and Museum Rotterdam, two Dutch City Museums, are...Show moreIn this day and age it is of vital importance for museums to be socially inclusive and relevant for their communities. The Haags Historisch Museum and Museum Rotterdam, two Dutch City Museums, are actively concerned with the inclusive representation of ethnic minority communities. They exemplify current issues in the theoretical discourse, and what other museums deal with in their policies and practices. The policies and practices of both museums connect with their aims to be socially relevant and inclusive institutions. Their most common practices in accomplishing this involve exhibition-making, organising activities and community projects, collecting new heritage, and forming partnerships. The combination of a theoretical framework and the case-studies of the Haags Historisch Museum and Museum Rotterdam provide a specific insight on the connections that both museums make between exhibitions, representing ethnic minority communities, and the social and community relevance of museums. Their approaches show both similarities and differences.Show less
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...Show moreThe 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.Show less
