'Bringing the mountain (and museum) to Mohammed'

Good morning everyone, and thank you Sarah for that kind introduction. Today I am going to give you an insight into how Amsterdam Museum has adopted a novel approach to reaching new audiences, predominantly audiences that aren’t particularly inclined to visit museums, which is a challenge many of us face. Our budgets are modest, and our approach has reflected that, using creativity instead of cold hard cash. Amsterdam Museum is a city museum, manages the art collection of the city, and tells the story of Amsterdam – its history and its culture. Now when you think of Amsterdam, some images naturally come to mind…
The historic city centre surrounded by the world-famous canals, the 17th and 18th century architecture which is instantly recognisable, and of course bicycles. Amsterdam established itself as an important trading centre during medieval times and has flourished, at varying degrees, ever since. It was the combination of prosperity and Dutch Masters that were keen to work on commission, which led to the establishment of a very extensive and extremely valuable art collection owned by the city of Amsterdam. Unfortunately for us, quite a few of the highlights of the city’s collection were permanently loaned to the Rijksmuseum in the 19th century, to allow it to establish itself as a world-class institution. Among those works was a painting many of you will be familiar with; Rembrandt’s Nightwatch. However, roughly 80,000 objects remained under the city’s control, and the Amsterdam Museum was founded in 1925 to manage this collection.
Amsterdam Museum moved to its current location in 1975. It is housed in an urban complex that has been in use continuously since the Middle Ages, first as a monastery and subsequently for nearly 400 years (1578-1962) as an orphanage. This unique building and its location in the middle of the historic city centre, right off Amsterdam’s main shopping street, comes with great benefits and a number of challenges. The large courtyards and four public entrances give us ample space to programme and ensure non-stop activity at the heart of the museum, if only because the museum is used as a shortcut by locals. However, the old buildings limit the size of our exhibition halls, and therefore the art we can display and the type of exhibitions we can host. We have adapted to our home, and – just like the rest of Amsterdam – are making creative use of 17th and 18th century architecture to overcome its inherent limitations.
We tell the story of Amsterdam through our permanent exhibitions, which focus on the history and culture of Amsterdam from the Middle Ages to present day. Instead of imposing exhibition halls filled with large-scale artworks we have opted, partly out of necessity, for a more intimate journey through the history of Amsterdam. Additionally, our temporary exhibitions deal with contemporary issues in Amsterdam society. Previous examples include Black Amsterdam (pictured, paying homage to noteworthy black Amsterdammers), Transmission (featuring a famous trans Amsterdammer), Converted (about conversions to Islam), and Johan and I about football legend Johan Cruijff. But there is more to Amsterdam Museum than just our main location.
We also operate Museum Willet-Holthuysen, located on the prestigious Herengracht canal. Open to the public since 1896, this museum in its entirety is part of the collection of the city of Amsterdam. Abraham and Louisa Willet-Holthuysen left their house, extensive collection and a sizeable trust to the city of Amsterdam on the condition that it would be open to the public. We are keeping that promise to this day, sharing what it is like to live in a 19th century canal house with tens of thousands of visitors per year.
A few years ago we added another canal house to our portfolio. Located on an older stretch of Herengracht is the magnificent Cromhouthuis, once the home of the Cromhout Dynasty, a family of wealthy traders and former mayors of Amsterdam. Spread across two buildings, the Cromhouthuis museum contains thousands of objects from the Amsterdam Collection, ranging from paintings to weapons, from tableware to furniture. Styled as a 18th century cabinet of curiosities, this museum is particularly popular amongst ladies that lunch!
Another important Amsterdam monument that we partner with closely is Our Lord in the Attic, a hidden church in the middle of the red light district. This remarkable space opened as a church in 1661 and has been in use as a museum since 1888. Whereas the church itself has been brought back to its original condition, we use the neighbouring building to share stories about religion and tolerance in the widest possible meaning of those words.
The final museum in our portfolio is the Portrait Gallery of the Golden Age, a spectacular collection of the brothers and sisters of the Nightwatch. The Amsterdam Museum building is simply not big enough to display our collecton of group portraits, some of which are up to 10 feet tall and 15 feet wide. We collaborated with Hermitage Amsterdam, who have a beautiful building with large exhibitions halls, and the Rijksmuseum, who have loaned us a number of works that the city of Amsterdam loaned to them in the 19th century, to create this remarkable exhibition. The Portrait Gallery features over a dozen Golden Age group portraits, many of them much larger and more imposing than Rembrandt’s Nightwatch. A truly remarkable experience.
Combined, our portfolio offers a very thorough overview of the history and culture of Amsterdam. But sitting back and relaxing wasn’t an option. We are funded by the city of Amsterdam, and as such all residents of Amsterdam help fund us through city taxes. It therefore isn’t a stretch to say that we should welcome as many of them as possible to our museums. Although small by US standards, Amsterdam is growing rapidly. At the moment the city has a population of roughly 860.000 (click). That pales in comparision to London, New York and Los Angeles but is at the same time very close to being the biggest the city has ever been. The city has also never been as diverse as it is at the moment (click). With 182 nationalities living in the city of Amsterdam (out of 195 internationally recognised countries), Amsterdam is a true melting pot consisting of many different cultures, languages and leisure preferences. For many Amsterdammers, visiting a museum simply doesn’t seem a particularly attractive leisure activity. Welcoming as many of these Amsterdammers to our museums therefore won’t be an easy task… London: 8.2 million New York: 8.6 million LA: 4 million
And geography isn’t making that task any easier. This is a map of the inner city of Amsterdam, with the historic city centre and canals clearly visible at the centre of the image. With large parts of ‘downtown Amsterdam’ designated UNESCO World Heritage Site or national monument, the majority of urban development projects are located on the periphery of the city, in the areas marked red on this map (click)… and continuing well beyond the map. All of our museums (indicated by red stars) are located in the historic city centre. Which, incidentally, is also the most homogenous of all Amsterdam neighbourhoods. And by far the busiest, with many debates about the effects of over-tourism on the city centre (click). This is the main shopping street, right next-door to our museum. Many Amsterdam residents now avoid the city centre. This poses a dilemma: Either we can focus on the audience that resides in and visits the historic city centre, meaning an older and more affluent demographic and of course tourists, or we can try and motivate Amsterdammers living in outlying neighbourhoods to change their leisure behaviour and visit ‘tourist central’. Neither option felt right to us. We chose to go in a different direction altogether.
The museum presented its netwerk museum strategy in early 2016. The vision was for the museum to have a presence in every Amsterdam neighbourhood; to be where our target audience is located. While this may seem like a classic ‘easier said than done’ statement, the key to this strategy is collaboration. Culture plays a huge part in daily life in Amsterdam, regardless of neighbourhood or demographic. And cultural organisations by nature are very keen to collaborate, share and grow together. The approach taken for our network museum strategy was that of flexible partnerships, resulting in collaborations that are often somewhat removed from the traditional museum concept, always befitting the neighbourhood they are located in and combining the best that our partner organisation as well as our team has to offer. Let me talk you through a few examples.
ModeMuze, which translates as Fashion Muze, is a collaboration between a number of Dutch museums to digitise their fashion collections. For the last three years we have taken a leading role in giving ModeMuze a physical presence, working with our dear partner the Public Library of Amsterdam. Combining the collections of the participating museums with custom made items from students and up-and-coming designers, about 10,000 visitors a year enjoy this museum pop-up in the main Amsterdam Public Library. Some come to the library specifically for this exhibit, and many more simply used the exhibition as a break from reading, researching or studying… either way, this collaboration allows us to reach an audience that doesn’t frequent museums.
We actually already had a presence in one of the neighbourhoods currently being expanded signficantly. Our state-of-the-art collection centre was opened in Amsterdam North, the former location of the port, in 2011. Over the past few years we have really stepped up our efforts to make the collection as accessible as possible, resulting in an extensive public programme in the collection centre itself. Guided tours, collector meetings, presentations… in collaboration with local organisations we are currently hosting approximately 150 groups per year in this secure facility, with plans to further grow that number. And while doing so, we continue to give every visitor to the collection centre a yellow ring, as seen in the bottom left-hand image, inscribed “van ons”, which means ours, to symbolise that the collection is owned by the residents of Amsterdam.
Amsterdam Southeast, at one time an area best avoided at night, is now known as Amsterdam’s version of Brooklyn. Colourful, vibrant and ecclectic, the area couldn’t be more different from Amsterdam’s historic city centre. We have partnered with the Open Space Contemporary Art Museum, a local initiative, to provide support and training to their team. We are very hands-on in various areas, such as curatorial, education, fundraising, marketing and communication, to help make the best of their amazing events and exhibitions. Whether it is working with local artists to provide a multi-cultural perspective on Golden Age portraits, or training young people with intellectual disabilities to be museum tour guides, this is a collaboration that simply keeps on giving.
Nieuw-West will soon become the largest neighbourhood in Amsterdam, growing exponentially over the next decade. It also has the lowest cultural participation rate in all of Amsterdam. Working with over a dozen local partners, we have launched the ‘Women of New-West’ project, documenting the women living in Nieuw-West and telling their stories. The main exhibition, as seen on this slide, will tour 10 public libraries and community centres in Nieuw-West. It contains the photos and stories of the women, but also talks about the history of the Nieuw-West neighbourhood and the importance of the neighbourhood to the future of Amsterdam as a whole. The photos themselves will also be displayed on outdoor poster sites throughout the neighbourhood, exposing as many of the area’s residents to the project as possible.
So… how did we do? In a short period of time, we have managed to expand our activities into the up-and-coming urban hotspots, reaching audiences that wouldn’t necessarily otherwise have visited our museums in the city centre. But it wouldn’t be true collaboration if we didn’t learn from our partners, and infused a bit of the various neighbourhoods into our city centre locations.
Working with CBK Zuidoost, a cultural organisation from Amsterdam Southeast, we organise an annual exhibition, giving two young artists the opportunity to show their work in our main museum. Over the years we have acquired a number of the pieces shown, and the artwork shown in the bottom-left hand image will be added to our permanent exhibition this autumn.
We have a long history of collaborating with the LGBTQI+ community. We were the first Dutch museum to introduce gender neutral bathrooms, and our Transmission exhibition gave the trans community a mainstream platform. This summer will be the fourth edition of the Shakespeare Club, a week-long event of lectures, guided tours, group meetings and socials to coincide with Pride Amsterdam. Whether it is a lecture on emancipation, a gay perspective on our collection, or a deep-dive into gender identity by way of the gender bread doll, this week is all about different perspectives. And because one week is never enough, we have recently launched monthly LGBTQI+ History Talks, to provide a year-round platform for these interesting perspectives.
Voices of Tolerance is an educational programme developed by Our Lord in the Attic, aimed at high school students. It serves to stimulate discussion about tolerance, what the concept means to you, and how it has developed over time. The programme is based on the history of the hidden church, hidden because of religious oppression at the time, but is forward-looking in nature. Thousands of students have visited Our Lord in the Attic, which was never very popular among this group, to participate in the programme and learn more about the concept of tolerance, not just in the 17th but also the 21st century.
One of our best-known collaborative programmes is New Narratives through which we tackle the fact that stories reflect the perspective of the narrator, and there are many more perspectives than there are museum curators. The programme consists of museum tours led by volunteer guides, looking at the museum’s collection from their perspective. Tours have been led by a holocaust survivor, a descendent of slaves, a gay woman, and a deaf Iranian refugee, just to give you a few examples. All of them have given their own personal perspective on the collection, highlighting those pieces that have special meaning to them, and relating their own life story to the collection. Many of our collaborative partners have led New Narratives tours, and we regularly start new partnerships with a tour as a way of getting to know each other. The programme is highly successful, has moved from a Thursday afternoon to a Saturday afternoon slot, sells out regularly, and we are currently investigating ways to capture New Narratives within our written interpretation.
As a marketeer, I love numbers, so I couldn’t resist sharing a little bit of quantitative data with you. As you can see, since implementation of the network museum strategy started in early 2016, the percentage of Amsterdam visitors to our main museum has gradually increased. Having previously hovered around the 12% mark, we are now hoping to grow to 20% in the next two years. As you can see from the heatmap, if you know anything about Dutch geography that is, Amsterdam is now by far our most significant domestic market. And mind you, this does not include any of the Amsterdammers that visited any of our collaborations throughout the city. This only relates to visits to our main location, which goes to show that our many partnerships throughout the city drive visitation to our city centre museum.
The network strategy obviously also has consequences for our brand. While our brand strategy was never quite at award-winning level, with no less than six individual brands being managed by my team, things have gotten even more convoluted due to the network strategy. It is challenging enough to explain to our visitors how the six brands displayed here are related, but how do we explain our collaboration with the Public Library, Shakespeare Club, or New Narratives?
We are currently in the process of drawing up options for a new brand hierarchy, aimed at providing clarity when it comes to our networked locations. Our flexible partnership model means that there is no one-size fits all solution, so many different association lock-ups are being considered at the moment. Our partners are actively involved in this process and while we still have a long way to go, everyone involved is very keen to create a better understanding of our network collaborations, and what Amsterdam Museum’s specific role is within the collaboration. “A part of” is most suited for our own locations, whereas “joining forces with” is a beautiful phrase to indicate our involvement and role in many of our collaborations. “Powered by”, on the other hand, is an example of a phrase that our partners didn’t feel particularly happy with as it doesn’t suggest an equal partnership.
We are even reviewing our own brands. At the moment many of our locations share the same target audiences, yet very few of our visitors actually visit more than one of our museums. In part, because they simply don’t know that we have more than one location, and that our other museums offer a more in-depth look into a particular aspect of Amsterdam history and culture. Our hope is that by making it much clearer that the museums are part of one group, and tell different aspects of one and the same story, we can motivate our visitors to visit two or more of our museums. We are currently market testing a number of ways of doing so, one of which is shown on this slide.
Thank you for allowing me to give you a brief look into the first two years of executing our network museum strategy. It shows you how we have expanded our programming and presence into the neighbourhoods that are growing the fastest, using that expansion to reach more Amsterdam residents than ever before, and bring back some of the flair en quirkyness of those collaborations to our main locations in the city centre. We have chosen to be where our target audiences are, and to invest more into programming than into marketing, both of which have led to strong results and praise from our stakeholders. It also shows you the impact this strategy is having on our brands, and the first steps we are taking in updating our brands to fit the new reality of the networked Amsterdam Museum. We are very encouraged by the results to date, and let’s not forget, we have only just begun… so watch this space!

'Bringing the mountain (and museum) to Mohammed'

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'Bringing the mountain (and museum) to Mohammed'

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