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 put up, 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 concerning the achievements and challenges.
Martin Bailey: Coming to the museum, it’s essential to have thought rather a lot about why Van Gogh is sort of so standard with guests from all world wide. What makes him fairly so particular?
Emilie Gordenker: We all know a lot about Van Gogh’s private life story, via his letters. Most visible artists should not “bilingual”: their main language is visible and you’re fortunate if they will additionally specific themselves in phrases, not to mention write in the best way that he did. Van Gogh’s work are vibrant, his subject material is interesting, it’s various, he’s very direct. His life was one in all working towards the percentages: the difficulties that he surmounted represents an enchanting story, one providing solace and hope. There’s a freshness and immediacy to his work. Each technology appears to rediscover him.
Individuals are equally all in favour of Van Gogh’s story and his artwork. How as a museum do you take care of the story—and notably his issues?
Till just a few years in the past we within the museum didn’t speak a lot about Van Gogh’s psychological state. There was then an excellent analysis venture that resulted in an exhibition in 2016, On the Verge of Madness. Now, presently, a number of younger individuals are scuffling with psychological well being points and are extra open about speaking about them. Van Gogh gives us—via 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 participating with individuals.
What do guests like and dislike about your museum?
We often monitor customer reactions and at all times rating very nicely. But when there’s a essential 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 put in writing a brand new technique. Covid pushed us to suppose 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 eternally.
We’ve extra guests per sq. metre than another main museum on this planet. We’ve an excellent location, an enormous title and a fantastic assortment, however a comparatively small constructing.
Whenever you put all this stuff collectively there may be extra demand than we are able to present for. There are only a few silver linings to Covid, however timed ticketing is one in all them. Guests have gotten used to that concept – and we’re going to maintain it.
The message just isn’t that we need to maintain individuals out. Quite the opposite, we wish individuals to come back, however we wish them to have a pleasing go to.
What does this imply by way of numbers?
Throughout Covid I used to be confronted with the museum’s largest disaster in our practically 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 suppose very exhausting about your monetary mannequin. It was a possibility to rethink that.
We began from scratch. We started by pondering 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 purpose?
This can be a totally different mind-set. Up to now, “extra was higher”: the more cash you bought, the extra you probably did. As a substitute we stated, what is basically essential 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 are going to be financially viable with 1 / 4 fewer guests than we acquired pre-Covid. In 2019 we had greater than 2.1m guests, however now we have now selected 1.6m a 12 months. Final 12 months, with Covid, we had 1.3m, however this 12 months it will likely be 1.6m or probably extra, however we don’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 in all probability be underground. That is one thing we need to begin exploring later this 12 months, 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 determine on in a short time, for the reason that scheduled programme needed to be thrown overboard due to Covid. It was a possibility to suppose what can we need to do, going ahead. In what interval of the 12 months would you like which sort of exhibition?
We determined that the autumn, when now we have fewer vacationers, must be a time for focussing on our Dutch guests. The notion of our museum had turn out to be 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 need them to fall in love with us once more. That knowledgeable my fascinated about exhibitions. Within the autumn we are going to plan stable, well-researched reveals with loans.
Spring will probably be extra of an exhibition playground. It will likely be a time to suppose extra broadly – perhaps a venture with artists of our personal time, maybe a thematic present, probably one thing outdoors one’s common consolation zone or perhaps a very scholarly present with not so many guests.
In summer season we are going to convey again the exhibition that we had earlier this 12 months concerning the Van Gogh household, Selecting Vincent. It’s a fantastic story for first-time guests. We’ll current the identical present subsequent 12 months, with some modifications, and in the next few summers to come back.
The doorway to this 12 months’s presentation of Selecting Vincent Credit score: The Artwork Newspaper
So there will probably be fewer mortgage reveals. Is that this to economize?
That was a consideration, however not the one one. It was largely about establishing a rhythm. However once you see the rising prices of main mortgage reveals, notably for transport and insurance coverage, you actually do should suppose how a lot you need to spend. After all we’re going to proceed with mortgage reveals, since that’s what we do nicely.
How are you going to rejoice the museum’s fiftieth anniversary?
With a really huge celebration in Museumplein (the big sq. beside the museum). It will likely be open to everybody within the afternoon of two June.
Within the Netherlands, now we have a customized that in your birthday you give one thing again to your folks, it’s known as a traktatie (deal with). What it’s, will probably be a shock.
Now for probably 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 technology. I totally anticipate that to proceed, however precisely how I can’t let you know.
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 issues. So the proliferation of photographs has helped us make what now we have clearer.
The digital is right here to remain, it gives us rather a lot, but it surely doesn’t exchange the precise expertise of seeing a murals. Individuals very a lot need to see an object. It’s at all times totally different seeing an paintings in a bodily means, a portray on a wall.
