On 2 June Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum celebrates its fiftieth birthday, marking its opening in 1973. With an impressive assortment donated by the grandson of Vincent’s brother Theo, it’s the world’s best museum dedicated to a single artist.
Emilie Gordenker, director of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Credit score: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
For this week’s publish, I interviewed Emilie Gordenker, who took over as director in February 2020. A specialist in Seventeenth-century Dutch artwork, she got here from the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the place she had been director since 2008.
The month after Gordenker’s arrival the museum needed to immediately shut due to Covid-19, thrusting the museum into what she describes as “the most important disaster” in its 50 years. On the eve of the anniversary celebrations, she speaks candidly in regards to the achievements and challenges.
Martin Bailey: Coming to the museum, you could have thought lots about why Van Gogh is sort of so common with guests from all all over the world. What makes him fairly so particular?
Emilie Gordenker: We all know a lot about Van Gogh’s private life story, by his letters. Most visible artists aren’t “bilingual”: their major language is visible and you might be fortunate if they will additionally specific themselves in phrases, not to mention write in the way in which that he did. Van Gogh’s work are vibrant, his subject material is interesting, it’s diverse, he’s very direct. His life was one in every of working towards the chances: the difficulties that he surmounted represents a captivating story, one providing solace and hope. There’s a freshness and immediacy to his work. Each era appears to rediscover him.
Individuals are equally serious about Van Gogh’s story and his artwork. How as a museum do you take care of the story—and notably his issues?
Till a number of years in the past we within the museum didn’t discuss a lot about Van Gogh’s psychological state. There was then an excellent analysis mission that resulted in an exhibition in 2016, On the Verge of Madness. Now, right now, numerous younger individuals are battling psychological well being points and are extra open about speaking about them. Van Gogh affords us—by his writing, his work, his life story—a means of speaking about our personal conditions.
Catalogue of On the Verge of Madness: Van Gogh and his Sickness, Van Gogh Museum, 2016
We’re at an awfully polarised second, whether or not in politics or in our society. Museums are locations the place individuals typically belief us. We’re a spot the place issues can get mentioned, utilizing the instance of Van Gogh. It’s a means of partaking with individuals.
What do guests like and dislike about your museum?
We frequently monitor customer reactions and all the time rating very properly. But when there’s a crucial be aware, it’s about crowds. Individuals are way more simply disturbed by crowds, post-Covid.
Guests on the Van Gogh Museum Credit score: The Artwork Newspaper
How are you coping with crowding?
Recognition is a pleasant drawback to have, however a thorny one. After I arrived we sat down with the workers and board to write down a brand new technique. Covid pushed us to assume actually exhausting about these points. My predecessors did a marvellous job throughout a development interval: then it was all about extra. However that couldn’t maintain happening endlessly.
We’ve extra guests per sq. metre than some other main museum on this planet. We’ve an excellent location, an enormous identify and an incredible assortment, however a comparatively small constructing.
If you put all this stuff collectively there’s extra demand than we are able to present for. There are only a few silver linings to Covid, however timed ticketing is one in every of them. Guests have gotten used to that concept – and we’re going to maintain it.
The message isn’t that we wish to maintain individuals out. Quite the opposite, we wish individuals to come back, however we wish them to have a nice go to.
What does this imply when it comes to numbers?
Throughout Covid I used to be confronted with the museum’s greatest disaster in our almost 50-year historical past. We obtain comparatively little subsidy from the federal government and a big a part of our earnings comes from ticket gross sales. When half of your earnings drops out, you assume very exhausting about your monetary mannequin. It was a chance to rethink that.
We began from scratch. We started by considering on a price foundation: to hold out our programme, how a lot do we have to do this? Then the subsequent query is, what’s the minimal variety of guests we have to obtain our objective?
It is a totally different mind-set. Previously, “extra was higher”: the extra money you bought, the extra you probably did. As a substitute we mentioned, what is actually necessary to do? Which guests are we not reaching and why? After which, how a lot cash do we have to do it?
We labored out that we’ll be financially viable with 1 / 4 fewer guests than we acquired pre-Covid. In 2019 we had greater than 2.1m guests, however we now have now selected 1.6m a yr. Final yr, with Covid, we had 1.3m, however this yr it is going to be 1.6m or presumably extra, however we wouldn’t have to scale up excessively.
The unique 1973 Van Gogh Museum constructing (left) and 1999 exhibition wing and 2015 customer entrance (proper) in Museumplein Credit score: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam ({photograph} Jan Kees Steenman)
Could not you develop your constructing, permitting for extra guests?
It’s potential, however it will most likely be underground. That is one thing we wish to begin exploring later this yr, however it will take a very long time to finish.
How do you organize your exhibition programme?
This was one of many issues that I needed to resolve on in a short time, for the reason that scheduled programme needed to be thrown overboard due to Covid. It was a chance to assume what can we wish to do, going ahead. In what interval of the yr would you like which kind of exhibition?
We determined that the autumn, when we now have fewer vacationers, needs to be a time for focussing on our Dutch guests. The notion of our museum had develop into a problem within the Netherlands, the place we have been seen as for vacationers. It was time to rethink the messaging, so our Dutch guests would rediscover us. I would like them to fall in love with us once more. That knowledgeable my excited about exhibitions. Within the autumn we are going to plan stable, well-researched exhibits with loans.
Spring will likely be extra of an exhibition playground. Will probably be a time to assume extra broadly – perhaps a mission with artists of our personal time, maybe a thematic present, presumably one thing outdoors one’s typical consolation zone or perhaps a very scholarly present with not so many guests.
In summer time we are going to convey again the exhibition that we had earlier this yr in regards to the Van Gogh household, Selecting Vincent. It’s an incredible story for first-time guests. We are going to current the identical present subsequent yr, with some modifications, and in the following couple of summers to come back.
The doorway to this yr’s presentation of Selecting Vincent Credit score: The Artwork Newspaper
So there will likely be fewer mortgage exhibits. Is that this to economize?
That was a consideration, however not the one one. It was principally about establishing a rhythm. However if you see the rising prices of main mortgage exhibits, notably for transport and insurance coverage, you actually do need to assume how a lot you wish to spend. After all we’re going to proceed with mortgage exhibits, since that’s what we do properly.
How are you going to have fun the museum’s fiftieth anniversary?
With a really huge occasion in Museumplein (the massive sq. beside the museum). Will probably be open to everybody within the afternoon of two June.
Within the Netherlands, we now have a customized that in your birthday you give one thing again to your pals, it’s referred to as a traktatie (deal with). What it’s, will likely be a shock.
Now for essentially the most tough query: What’s going to the museum be like in 50 years from now?
Nobody has a crystal ball. However Van Gogh has had a resonance for each era. I totally count on that to proceed, however precisely how I can not inform you.
Will individuals nonetheless be going to museums?
I’m completely sure of that. We’ve gone in a short time from a tradition that’s word-based to at least one that’s visible. That has actually assisted us as a museum: individuals are extra snug about taking a look at issues. So the proliferation of photos has helped us make what we now have clearer.
The digital is right here to remain, it affords us lots, however it doesn’t substitute the precise expertise of seeing a murals. Individuals very a lot wish to see an object. It’s all the time totally different seeing an paintings in a bodily means, a portray on a wall.
