Expositietip: Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum turned into therapeutic centre

© Olivier Middendorp

Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum turned into therapeutic centre

In a surprise move, the Netherlands’ top cultural institution, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, has been turned into a giant therapeutic centre designed to help people with emotional issues. The operation has been masterminded by two intellectuals, author Alain de Botton and art historian John Armstrong. The building has been decked out in banners screaming ‘Art is Therapy’ at the city, 200 works have been equipped with giant captions next to them, detailing the therapeutic benefits on offer, and six new rooms have been created to shed light on such themes as ‘Sex’, ‘Love’ and ‘Money.’ The show is expected to last until the autumn.

This move has, naturally, created outrage among the cultural elite. ‘The idea that art should help people to live is a piece of babyish absurdity we should all have grown out of long ago,’ declared the Guardian‘s fiery chief art critic, Adrian Searle. The New York Times similarly cast off its normal restraints to declare: ‘Reducing art to self-help is the greatest imaginable insult to the masterpieces of culture.’

Nevertheless, the show is expected to attract many visitors, burdened by issues, and keen to seek new insights, and fresh perspectives on them through art. But is it really such a problem to expect that art might help us to live and die? When people want to praise art museums, they sometimes remark that they are our ‘new cathedrals’. This seems an extremely accurate analogy, because for hundreds of years, cathedrals were, just like museums, by far the most significant places in society; they were the buildings people lavished money on and felt proudest of. They were the spiritual hearts of the community.

Bron en lees verder: www.philosophersmail.com/utopia/amsterdams-rijksmuseum-turned-into-a-mental-hospital/