Metamorphosis: The transformation of Dutch Museums

In 1990 the then Minister for Culture, Hedy d’Ancona, issued the Delta Plan for Cultural Preservation: a large-scale and national program to thoroughly improve collection storage conditions in Dutch museums. This signalled the start of a transformation of the Dutch museum.he reason for this radical transformation of Dutch museums was the pending privatization of the country’s national museums. From the beginning of the 1990s, national museums had to stand on their own feet. That gave the museum visitor a new position: the museums were forced to engage the public and did so with conviction. This new approach bore fruit: the public has been flocking to museums in increasing numbers and by doing so, have further transformed the Dutch museum. Museums want to open up their collections to everyone while protecting these collections as well as possible. To align these ambitions Dutch museums have engaged in an unprecedented construction boom. The desire to be able to study the results of those building activities brought the TUDelft to approach the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) to undertake a joint investigation into the transformation of museums in the Netherlands since 1990 together.

This book is part of a series of books produced in cooperation with and financed by the Stichting Rondeltappe-Bernoster-Kemmers. All books of the series have been reviewed and edited by Silvia Naldini, Section of Heritage & Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.