CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Imara Limon

New Narratives for the Amsterdam Museum
Imara Limon, Curator, Amsterdam Museum

Abstract

The Amsterdam Museum’s mission as a city museum is to be relevant to as wide-ranging an audience as possible. We live in a global society consisting of numerous interwoven identities and histories, and our aim is to reflect this in our programming and behind the scenes: the New Narratives project is a multi-year research program for reinterpreting the museum and the collections and for broadening the networks in the city and beyond. In a Dutch context, museums are only just beginning to acknowledge their identity as institutions with a specifically Western historical and art-historical canon rather than as universal places of knowledge. For example, our unique collection of large group portraits is associated with norms and values that are now connected to typical Dutchness, an attitude originating in the seventeenth century that included voyages of discovery and colonial expansion. Bringing in contemporary views through guest tour guides, focus groups, and contemporary artists who engage with material and non-material heritage helps to provide new insights and perspectives that were hitherto lacking, while at the same time adding to the collections.

About Imara Limon

Imara Limon is Curator at the Amsterdam Museum, where she was responsible for the exhibitions Black Amsterdam (2016) and Black & Revolutionary: The Story of Hermine & Otto Huiswoud (2017), an initiative of The Black Archives. She developed the multi-year research program New Narratives that is aimed at making the museum more inclusive. Limon studied Contemporary Art, Museology and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. She has an advisory position in arts funds and serves on the board of Kunsten ’92. In 2017 she was awarded the National Museum Talent Prize. In July and August 2018, she was curator-in-residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York.