New publications

Each title provides a behind-the-scenes look at our experimental, research-driven collections, exhibitions and research trajectories that engage with social and cultural change through ecology, repair, healing, and collectivity as solidarity. In Soils, gain insight into repairing our fraught relation to Land with the help of Dutch and international artists and activists, as well as the farmers who work the soils we depend on for life. In our latest collection book Delinking and Relinking get to know how exhibitions can engage multisensory tools and decolonial learnings to access different emotional and knowledge registers. Finally, in the Museum as Multiple read about how the twenty-year directorship of Charles Esche has shaped a demodernising museum.

All publications are available in Dutch and English online and in the museum.

Soils
Palestinian writer and mathematician Munir Fasheh proposes four “soils” as core to life on Earth: earth, cultural, communal, and affection-spiritual. The exhibition takes this as its title to highlight international connections and situated knowledges articulated by artists, designers, farmers, and activists. The publication reflects on artworks that emerged with partners TarraWarra Museum of Art in Victoria, Australia and Struggles for Sovereignty in Indonesia. Contributors: Teresa Cos Rebollo, Zena Cumpston, Charles Esche, Inez Dekker, Wapke Feenstra, Victoria Lynn, Rolando Vázquez, SFS (Eliesta Handitya, Gatari Surya Kusuma, Sanne Oorthuizen, Alec Steadman). Edited by Teresa Cos Rebollo, Charles Esche, Victoire Raffy. Design by David Bennewith and Sandra Kassenaar.

Delinking and Relinking
This publication takes you through the most recent collection presentations. Curators Diana Franssen and Steven ten Thije guide you through each room and its proposals. Experience expert Barbara Strating provides critical insight into the process of making a multisensory exhibition in dialogue with constituents who have physical disabilities. The book also includes love letters written as personal ads from the perspective of the artworks. Texts by researcher and journalist Reggie Baay reflect on whether a museum can be held to account with respect to its colonial origins, while director Charles Esche situates a “demodern museum is a museum that rewrites the history of modern art.” Contributors: Reggie Baay, Charles Esche, Diana Franssen, The Office of Queer Affairs, Barbara Strating. Edited by Charles Esche and Marjolein Ossewaarde. Design by The Rodina.

The Museum Is Multiple
This publication marks the two decades of Charles Esche’s directorship (2004–24) It is at once case study and illustrated archive. At its center are two durational conversations among past and present senior members of the curatorial team that lay bare differing positionalities reflective of the museum’s own navigation with the public. Key topics include social change including the decline of socialism, the rise of populism, and the influence of decolonial thought. The conversations betray how the museum has responded, in shifting to production contexts, an embrace of collective creativity, and demodernising. Essays address the idea of museum constituencies, colonial continuities and the responses of the Dutch art world. The publication covers the museum confederation L’Internationale and features infographics on the collection.  Contributors: Annie Fletcher, Charles Esche, Christiane Berndes, Nick Aikens, Steven ten Thije, Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, Julia Alting, Wulan Dirgantoro. Edited Charles Esche and Chương-Đài Võ. Design: Laura Pappa, Infographics: Studio Joost Grootens with Marjolein Ossewaarde and Abril Cisneros Ramírez.