International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle

Events in the Dutch Theatre Institute (NTHI)

Paul Blom (Amsterdam)

17. Internationaler SIBMAS-Kongreß / 17ème Congrès International de la SIBMAS / 17th International SIBMAS Congress, 1.-9. September 1988, Mannheim

Bericht / Actes / Documentation. Red.: Liselotte Homering. Mannheim : Städtisches Reiß-Museum, 1990. pp. 88-89

The first project with which we gained experience was the event Amsterdam-Berlin that officially began in February 1982. The idea of the event came up in a discussion two years prior to that between several representatives of the Dutch Theatre Institute and the directress of the Goethe Institute in Amsterdam. The global plan that arose during the discussions was to bring up the matter of relations between Amsterdam and Berlin in the period between both world wars. Up to 1933 many Dutch people left for Berlin because of the parochial atmosphere which did not suit them. Actors went to work with the German film industry, literary people and journalists established themselves or remained there for long periods. Homosexuals, journalists, artists or others, willingly went there as they were able to find the freedom which was then unthinkable in the Netherlands. After Hitler came to power in 1933, the countermovement began. The Dutch ex-patriots returned, and among them, German antifascists, Jews, artists and scientists who sought refuge in the Netherlands.

The Theatre Museum took on the task of making the background exhibition of this period which obviously falls into two parts. The Theatre Museum did not limit itself only to theatre, but placed that within the context of the other artistic and social happenings: politics, economy, the press, fashion, music, architecture, science etc.

After the initial discussions, the Theatre Museum deliberated intensively with the Goethe Institute in order to arrive at a coherent entity of activities to be taken up by museums, people and institutions in the scientific and art world. Plans were made for exhibitions, film programmes, a series of lectures, a book in which the most important aspects of the period being dealt with were to be presented, and finally, a film - The Theatre of the Memory - that can be best characterized as a documentary movie.

Long before the event began, an extraordinarily animated atmosphere quickly arose in Amsterdam, but also elsewhere, which led more and more institutions to joining up by developing an activity which linked up to the central idea. It eventually involved the participation of more than 40 institutions.

The reaction of the press was significant. After the event had actually begun, more than 300 newspaper articles appeared and more than 100 radio programmes and a total of eight television broadcasts were devoted to the event. It is possible to divide this publicity as follows:

A section of the media actually worked as partner within the event and took the initiative of all illustrating certain aspects ofthe period 1920-1940. Then, of course, there were the meetings for the separate parts of the programme. For a while it seemed as if the whole of the Netherlands had succeeded in recalling a difficult period. The question of the nature of the relationship between Germany and the Netherlands came up time and time again, and the general mood was that the event contributed to a reconciliation between the Netherlands and Germany.

If you now ask what the attendance at the theatre exhibition was like during and after all the energy of the publicity: reasonable but not overwhelming.

I shall pass over the counterpart-event in Berlin which was organized the following year with great success by the Dutch Theatre Institute and limit myself to a few remarks about the project La France aux Pays-Bas which was organized two years later by the Dutch Theatre Institute.

The reason for organizing this exhibition-project was due to the observation that the position of French in the Netherlands has been drastically weakened. - The influence of English-speaking countries is considerable, and since French was declared as an optional school subject, the language has become unfamiliar to hundreds of thousands of Dutch people. Nevertheless the links between both countries have been strong. In the past we have been occupied by France (and similarily so have many other European countries), and the influence of France and French culture in the Netherlands was and remains considerably large. The aim of our project was to point out these influences in the past and in the present. This exhibition project was not as extensive as the Amsterdam-Berlin event, but in its entirety it did nevertheless include a film programme, a series of lectures and various book publications, of which one was comparable to the review collection Amsterdam-Berlin with a series of articles concerning various subjects which were brought up during the event. The problem with the exhibition, as a whole, was the obvious absence of a gravitation point. That point of gravitation was clearly present in Amsterdam-Berlin: it dealt with the period 1920-1940, the period between the two world wars. A heavily charged period of great interest, and also of heavy emotional significance which leads up to and through the Second World War. With La France aux Pays-Bas that focus lacked and, as a result, the subjects ranged from the Huguenots in the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th century, impressionism, current French fashion, etc. We even produced an exhibition about theatrical life during the French epoch, the period between 1780 and 1813 - the year of establishment of the Dutch monarchy. A harmonious entity about - among other things - the theatre world from that period, supplemented by information about fashion, the press, science, etc.

We caught the public's attention by holding the exhibition in the Nieuwe Kerk, the church on the Dam Dutch Square in Amsterdam. Approximately 100,000 people visited the exhibition. In the church we set up a small exhibition of 18th century theatre-drawings from the collection of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. There was an extraordinarily large number of reactions from the press. I have not glued them together but they would fill up a rather thick book. There was much interest in the part of the radio, and also time was devoted to the exhibition project in some television programmes. It was all very agreeable and nice, but not so intense as Amsterdam-Berlin.

It is, I hope, clear that these events attracted much attention from the press and a large public as well. The big advantage is, I think, that one does not end up isolating one's own (theatre) subject but one presents it to the public in a broader context. That helps to make a theatre exhibition more meaningful and more understandable for a general public. For the same reasons, there is a great deal of interest in other institutions to co-operate. Many things can be done collectively and the chance of getting extra money from sponsors and government funds both here in your own country and abroad are substantially good.

14th Congress

SIBMAS Home

HOME-BIENVENUE

Rules
Statuts

Executive Committee
Comité exécutif

Institutional Members
Membres institutionnels

Joining SIBMAS
Adhérer à la SIBMAS

International Directory
Répertoire international

Congresses
Congrès

National Collections
Collections nationales

Research Sites
Sites de recherche

Partner Organisations
Organisations soeurs

WHAT'S NEW
NOUVEAUTÉS

FORUM