Reflections on Foam’s The Future of the Photography Museum and thoughts about Volt

Photo by Dimer van Santen/Foam on Flickr.

If you name your exhibition The Future of the Photography Museum you’re sure to spark my curiosity. And if one of the installations makes it to the Huffington Post where it unleashes a storm of negative comments – as happened with the stunning 24 Hours Photos by Erik Kessels – you can be certain there’s something worthwhile going on. And there is! If you’re in Amsterdam before December 7th (for GLAMcamp Amsterdam, DISH 2011 or leisure) it’s a must-see.

The Future of the Photography Museum and its accompanying magazine What’s Next? by Foam in Amsterdam are an investigation into the possibilities and trends of photography as a medium, the photography museum as intermediary, the relationship with the audience and even monetary and organisational aspects of the museum of the future. The exposition is slightly messy, which is not bad as it’s a mash-up of different ideas by four guest curators: Lauren Cornell, Jefferson Hack, Erik Kessels and Alison Nordström.

What stayed with me from the exposition is the position of the visitor and the general audience in the museum. We’ve been talking for at least ten years about the transformation of people from consumers to producers of information, but the role of the museum in this new world is still mostly unclear. Foam does some different suggestions for this, ranging from new forms of ‘passive engagement’ using digital presentation – Jefferson Hack’s Mother Sculpture – to ‘passive participation’ in which the wealth of UGC on the internet is used to create installations – Erik Kessels’ 24 Hours Photos – to active participation in the Activating programme, where visitors can contribute to the museum. Read the rest of this entry »

Nieuwe Groeten Uit… A crowd-sourced and crowd-curated exposition

Nieuwe groeten uit… (“New greetings from…”) is a crowd-sourced, crowd-curated exposition in the city of Arnhem in the east of the Netherlands. Last Thursday my museum opened the last part of the yearlong project. In many ways it’s a special exposition and project, I think, and worth sharing.

Somewhat over a year ago FOAM photography museum Amsterdam, the ANP Historical Archive and the Museum of National History of the Netherlands came together to find a replacement for the traditional postcards. Most postcards show an old-fashioned image of Holland: cheese, cows and wooden shoes. The Netherlands has changed significantly over the last years, and Nieuwe Groeten Uit… was a search for new postcards.

The general public played a mayor part in every phase of the project: gathering the photographs for the postcards, selecting the best post-cards and even putting them on display.

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Intimate Strangers – A special exhibition experience in FOAM

Yesterday during the MuseumNacht (Museum Night) in Amsterdam, I had the chance to visit ‘Intimate Strangers‘, a temporary exhibition in the FOAM Photography Museum on the work of the Dutch photographer Sanne Sannes.

The MuseumNacht is an annual event in which 26,000 people visit the museums of Amsterdam at night, often for the first time in their lives. Sanne’s work is slightly erotic and intimate in its nature. On top of that, although photography is a very popular form of art, I think it’s one of the more difficult ones to engage your audience with. It’s easily accessible, but difficult to have people take their time to really discover the layered experience good photography can give you.

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