NWO Smart Culture grant for The Critical Visitor

The project has been granted a € 500.000,- NWO Smart Culture Grant and seeks to develop an intersectional methodology to achieve more diverse and inclusive practices.

The focus of the project is set on museology and archive studies: who are and are not represented, and who desire access to these spaces of cultural identity and institutional memory? From post-colonial activism to feminist critique and queer histories, The Critical Visitor engages with urgent and hotly debated issues of contemporary identity politics.  

Under the guidance of Dirk van den Heuvel (Architecture), Eliza Steinbock (Leiden University, project lead) and Hester Dibbits (Reinwardt Academy, Amsterdam), the project will run five years with twelve partners. These include, amongst others, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Stedelijk Museum, the IHLIA archive, and Van Abbe Museum. Next to two PhD-positions, the project involves a range of field labs, archive interactions with artists, and salon series to engage with practitioners and the public.