Museums are powerful places where art and (historical) objects can be used as social generators, encouraging new perspectives and social change. I am proud to have worked on learning projects that show hi/stories from different cultural perspectives and co-create a welcoming atmosphere for visitors who often feel left out in traditional museum environments.

At the same time, many museums aren’t inclusive yet. There’s is a lack of cultural diversity in museums when it comes to visitors, employees and the stories that are being told and voices that are being heard. One of the ways forward is to hire and keep hiring a diverse, multicultural museum workforce that is future-proof. Our societies are only becoming more diverse, more globally connected. Change is here to stay.

A network that has helped me and encouraged me to feel ‘in place’ in museums is the fabulous DETOX group in the U.K. They are a rather informal network of more than 130 museum employees from BAME-backgrounds (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) in the U.K.. They mentor, share advice and vacancies, and offer a safe-space for exchanging experiences.

In June I organised an evening event for DETOX at the international MuseumNext conference in Rotterdam. After I spoke at the event, I was asked to write and talk about diversity on several occasions:

• MuseumNext event and blog post: TENT x Museum Detox Event, MuseumNext 2017 (with Annemarie De Wildt en Imara Lemon from Amsterdam Museum and Patrick Campbell and Miranda Lowe from the Natural History Museum, London, U.K.), June 2017
• LKCA blog post Cultureel Kapitaal, 'Tijd voor een Detox-kuur in Nederlandse musea', September 2017
• NightShift Rotterdam: evening lecture for museum professionals with discussion 'Who do (not) visit our museums?' (with Marleen Hartjes, Van Abbemuseum, and Nicole van Dijk, Rotterdam Museum), September 2017

Would you like to read up on my thoughts and views? In text you will find some links.
You can also drop me a message and/or add me on LinkedIn. I love discussing diversity and working towards more inclusive museums.

Like Vincent van Gogh, Willem de Kooning was a Dutch artist who aspired an international life. As a young man, he moved from the Netherlands to New York in 1926. Later, in the 1960s, he moved to the American countryside, the Hamptons, where he enjoyed cycling and taking in Montauk's beautiful views. De Kooning made a similar move to Van Gogh in his thirties. Van Gogh had started painting in Holland but moved via Paris to the South of France in the 1880s, attracted by the Provence's beautiful light and colour.

Natalie and I decided to take Van Gogh's and De Kooning's love of nature as a starting point for the programme (Verhaal op Zaal). We told stories and engaged visitors in conversations about abstract art and figurative art, based on what they saw in Van Gogh's and De Kooning's paintings. We also discussed expressing emotions in nature, through line, colour and gesture: what emotional responses do you have when you see Van Gogh's Reaper? And what about this De Kooning? Most visitors came to the museum to see Van Gogh and left with a new appreciation of De Kooning's art.

Have a look at Montauk IV in the Stedelijk Museum collection: what do you think you see yourself? Would you call this work 'expressive'? And why? Would you call it 'abstract'?

Natalie and I delivered the tours weekly, in both English and Dutch, throughout May and June.
You can join the Verhaal op Zaal tours in the Van Gogh Museum every Thursday. (De Kooning's Montauk IV ​is back home, at the Stedelijk Museum, however.)

I have been lucky to work for the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam) as a museumdocent and guide since 2015. Van Gogh is one of the reasons I studied Dutch Fin de Siècle-culture at university and to date I still love his work: his paintings are full of colour, curiosity and comfort. I believe everyone responds to his works, no matter what your background is.

I was asked by the Van Gogh Museum to contribute to their Vincent op Vrijdag programme (a monthly evening programme for young people). This month the museum partnered with one of Amsterdam’s best known clubs for Vincent op Vrijdag: the Melkweg. It organised a contemporary pop-up exhibition in De Melkweg, with work from ten young artists or designers who to date still take inspiration from Van Gogh’s work.
Me and my colleague Anita Rademakers were asked to develop and deliver short tours through the pop-up exhibition, at night, during Encore (a hip-hop and r&b club night). We started touring at midnight and ended at 3am! There was even a proper propper on scene, who did an amazing job encouraging people from the dancing floors into the exhibition room.

Anita and I had a fun and productive evening. Visitors were surprised to see art in a club and asked lots of questions. Some admitted they had never been inside the Van Gogh Museum and promised us they would come and visit.
We had a laugh grooving to r&b, admired Mattijs van Bergen’s eye-catching dresses - who clearly were the public’s favourite - and  I loved to get introduced to the simple black-and-white work by Suat Ögüt who revives Van Gogh's lost paintings.

Have a look at the pictures. Do you think clubs should organise more exhibitions?

Here is a short summary for non-Dutch speakers:
My opinion piece was a response to Shervin Nekuee's article on 'Apartheid in the Dutch arts'. Like I do, Shervin recognises that there hardly are any decision-making art professionals from minority backgrounds in the Dutch cultural sector. I reject Shervin's pessimist tone though.

For a new generation of 'culture vultures' diversity is engrained in their behaviour. Where an older generation of museum, theatre and art managers could still ignore the (early) impact of migration, globalisation and digitalisation, a new, younger generation  can not. They cannot allow their organisations to act within a social vacuum, removed from an increasingly diverse group of 21st-century audiences and funders.

Let's be positive. Instead of talking about exclusion mechanisms, let's openly discuss how we can be more inclusive. Who are diversity role models in the sector? How can we make sure promising young professionals from a non-Dutch background are being promoted? How to provide safe working environments for starters in the cultural sector?  With an open, honest and responsive attitude, cultural organisations cannot but recognise that diversity is in their own interest.

​'Inclusion' can only add to the quality of cultural programmes on offer. A more diverse sector with professionals from all strands of society will allow spaces where 21st-century audiences can safely learn, reflect and share ideas, responding to two all-encompassing questions: What makes us human? What makes me me?