Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Tag: History

  • Swinging to the Right?

    The dust has now settled following the Dutch election. While the result won’t be officially given until next week (after the postal votes from Dutch ex-pats have been counted), it seems almost certain that the D66 party, led by Rob Jetten has got the most votes.

    It was a close-run thing, with the PVV of Geert Wilders matching the 26 parliamentary seats garnered by D66.

    For a governing majority in the Dutch parliament, Jetten needs more than 75 seats, so, as usual in Dutch politics, he needs to form a coalition with other parties. And there’s the rub. He has said that his ideal would be to form a coalition with the Groen-Links/PvDA, VVD and CDA parties. That would make a Centrist coalition, with the GL/PvDA on the left wing and the VVD on the right, However, the fly in the ointment is the leader of the VVD, Dilan Yeşilgöz. She has made it clear that she won’t work with the GL/PvDA party. Her party has been moving increasingly rightwards, and the gulf between it and the socialist GL/PvDA is now seemingly too great.

    Personally (because I am a life-long socialist, just like my parents were), I would be happy with Jetten’s preferred coalition, because it would seek to serve the broadest spectrum of the population. He himself has said that he wants to serve all of us.

    Yeşilgöz on the other hand will want to supplant GL/PvDA with a hardline Rightist party, such as JA21, which would push the coalition to the Right.

    If that happens, then I fear that Dutch politics will remain in the quagmire of blaming all the country’s ills on immigrants, and fail to address the real issues and problems as happened with the last government. Ironic really, since Yeşilgöz herself is an immigrant.

  • A Visit To The Depot

    The Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam has a vast collection of items, of which only about 6 to 8% of which are on display at any one time. The rest were being housed in a variety of locations in the Netherlands, including the basement of the museum.

    The basement was flooded in 2013, thus prompting a plan to build a new storage facility close to the museum that would be capable of housing the entire collection.

    This became the Depot Museum Boijmans van Beuningen – simply and aptly known to Rotterdammers as “De Pot” (the Pot).

    Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, the art storage museum housed in a curved mirror glass building. Opened November 2021

    Unlike most museum storage facilities, it is open to the public and I visited it yesterday for the first time in the company of two friends.

    I was most impressed by it. It has a central atrium criss-crossed by stairs connecting the six floors, with some of the collection being displayed in glass cases around the atrium. Information about the objects is revealed via the Depot App used to scan QR codes next to the objects.

    There are passenger lifts and a massive freight lift used to get the pieces to the storage rooms. All the storage rooms are climate controlled, and short tours of small groups are given by the curators.

    There are areas where themed exhibitions are held, and the current programme is to be found on the Depot website.

    The rooms where the curators and conservators work can be viewed via windows in the atrium.

    The Depot is topped off with a roof garden and restaurant.

    When the Depot first opened in 2021, the Architecture critic of the Guardian was a bit sniffy about it, but I found it an interesting place to visit and learn from. Of course, with over 155,000 objects in the museum’s collection, each visit can only make a tiny scratch on the surface.

    The Boijmans van Beuningen museum itself is currently closed until 2030 for major renovations. When it reopens, there will be more space to reveal their collection. If I’m still here, I look forward to that.