Saturday, 29 November 2014

Location: De Balie, Amsterdam
Time: 10:30 a.m.
Admission fee: website De Balie

Recently the international auctions have broken all records on the works they sell. Over 20 million euros were spent on paintings of living artists like Gerhard Richter. Should he be thankful for that? What is the critical value of a painting that has become a fetish, a toy to play with for speculants and a symbol of the unjust ditribution of wealth in our world?

During this gathering we will discuss the financial worth vs. the social worth of art. The monetary value of artworks forms a proof for the vitality of the financial capital – despite the financial crisis that led to major cutbacks in the art world. The most important question is: what is the real worth of art nowadays?

Big words like ‘the experiment’, ‘young talent’ and ‘critical art’ sound empty when all that really matters is the financial value. Are there any strategies we can think of that can help us transform these facts into a different set of values? Can artistst, collectors, buyers and sellers change the market from within?

The panelists of this discussion are Beatrix Ruf (Director Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), Olav Velthuis (Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam), Matthew Slotover (Co-founder Frieze) and artist Zachary Formwalt. Defne Ayas (director Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam) will moderate this programme.

For online screening of the debate click here

Thursday, 27 November 2014

Time: 3.30 p.m. - 5.00 p.m.
Location: De Balie
Admission fee: see website De Balie

Although everyone is talking about globalization, the consequences of this debate – at least in The Netherlands – are practically invisible in the collections and exhibitions of Dutch art institutions. Western European art and North American art are represented, but contemporary art from even the BRIC countries is hard to find in our museums. This is remarkable, especially if we consider their impressive local art histories. To inform ourselves on these subjects, we still have to visit ethnological museums.

For online screening of the debate click here
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Sunday, 2 November 2014

Location: Stedelijk Museum
Time: 1:00 – 5:30 p.m.

Panel discussion and cine-concert at the Stedelijk Museum in the context of the public program of the exhibition This is the Time. This is the Record of the Time, the second exhibition of the Stedelijk Museum’s Global Collaborations project. With the participation of Zeina Arida (Sursock Museum), Octavian Esanu (AUB Galleries), Mona Hallak (Beit Beirut) and Kristine Khoury. Followed by The Night of Recounting the Years, a screening of the Egyptian classic The Mummy (1969) with live music by Sharif Sehnaoui and Raed Yassin.

Hosted and moderated by: Angela Harutyunyan & Nat Muller (curators This is the Time. This is the Record of the Time)
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Thursday, 30 October & Friday, 31 October 2014

Location: Stedelijk Museum
Time: 1:30 - 5:15 p.m.

Sculpting in Time: Present Conditional is a programme of auteur film from Lebanon guest curated and introduced by curator and writer Rasha Salti. It is part of the public programme of the exhibition This is the Time. This is the Record of the Time, the second exhibition of the Stedelijk Museum’s Global Collaborations project.


Thursday, 30 October 2014
1:30-3:00: (Posthumous) and 1958 by Ghassan Salhab
3:00-3:30 break
3:30-5:15: Birds of September by Sarah Francis
All films with introductions by Rasha Salti.

Friday, 31 October 2014
1:30-3:00: My Heart Beats Only for Her by Mohamed Soueid
3:00-3:30 break
3:30-5:15: A World Not Ours by Mahdi Fleifel
All films with introductions by Rasha Salti. The screening A World Not Ours is followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel
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This is the Time. This is the Record of the Time

With Daniele Genadry and Cynthia Zaven, and a conversation between Walid Sadek and Rico Franses.

When: 14 September, 14.00
Where: SMBA, Rozenstraat 59, Amsterdam

Language: English
Free admission, RSVP please at mail@smba.nl

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Sunday, 31 August 2014, 2:00 p.m.

Cost: Voluntary donation (suggestion: € 5.00) RSVP: mail@smba.nl

The exhibition 'Uli Westphal - Transplantation' in Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam concludes with a guided tour and seed extraction workshop. During the workshop artist Uli Westphal will demonstrate how to extract seeds from tomatoes. In addition, Westphal will tell the stories behind the many tomato varieties that matured during the summer in the exhibition. Westphal will also elaborate on his long research on crop diversity, for which he collected many obscure fruit and vegetable samples and collaborated with farmers, gene banks and non-profit organizations. Of course, participants can also taste the unique flavors and textures, and learn how to extract seeds from the tomatoes and keep them. It is also possible to adopt an extraordinary tomato variety to grow in future seasons in and around Amsterdam. Support biodiversity and join us!

The workshop is kindly supported by the Goethe Institut

Date: Wednesday, 20 August
Time: 8 p.m.
Location: SMBA, Rozenstraat 59, Amsterdam
Language: English
Admission: free
Reservations through: mail@smba.nl

With: Joris Lohman (YFM), Luc Groot (Agriterra), Annechien Meier, Bert Visser (CGN), Uli Westphal and moderator Janno Lanjouw (FFF)


Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam organizes, in cooperation with Youth Food Movement, a debate addressing the topic of crop and food security. Crop diversity is one of the most important and most undervalued public goods in the world. The greater the diversity of crops and of the varieties contained within them, the greater the guarantee that our agriculture can endure any disaster, from drought to diseases. The opposite is also true. A decrease in diversity increases the likelihood that the biological basis of our food disappears. Will our food crop up in the future? will bring together artists, scientists and thinkers to discuss on the state of the worlds crop diversity and on ways to preserve and promote it.
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MACBA Capella, Barcelona

Opening: Thursday June 19 from 7:30 to 10:00pm

Within the context of the exhibition organised at the end of the MeLa project European Museums in an Age of Migrations, the Stedelijk Museum presents two performances in collaboration with Quinsy Gario. Central elements of his Zwarte Piet is Racisme (Black Pete is Racism) are displayed in an installation, while A Village Called Gario will be performed. Read more…

A Village Called Gario will also be staged at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam as opening of the exhibition 'How Far How Near'.

A project in collaboration with the Curating Contemporary Art Programme, Royal College of Art and supported by MeLa.

With a conversation between Lynn Berger, Elisa van Joolen, José Teunissen, moderated by Sanne Oorthuizen.

Date: Wednesday, 28 May 2014
Time: 8 p.m.
Location: SMBA, Rozenstraat 59, Amsterdam
Language: English

Free entry
rsvp: mail@smba.nl

11"x17" Reader by Elisa van Joolen will be launched on Wednesday May 28th. 11"x17" is an on-going project that examines and challenges the fashion industry’s prevailing value systems and proposes new methods of production.
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Rayyane Tabet, interviewed by Nat Muller
When: 11 April, 15.30-17.00h
Where: SMBA, Rozenstraat 59, Amsterdam

Important: unfortunately Kemang Wa Lehulere had to cancel the Artists Talk due to personal reasons.

Language: English
Free admission, RSVP please at mail@smba.nl

Preceeding the opening of the exhibitions 'Lard Buurman - Africa Junctions' at Looiersgracht 60, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam takes the opportunity to organize two artist talks.

In an interview conducted by independent curator and critic Nat Muller, ,Rayyane Tabet discusses how his interest in material and form spurs his exploration of history and the built environment. Formally trained as an architect, he talks to curator and critic Nat Muller about how sculpture and object-making, as temporal and spatial interventions, feature in his work. Tabet explores the relationship between history and the built environment. His multi-faceted installations often reconstitute the perception of physical and temporal distance. His work was showcased in the Sharjah Biennial X in 2011, The New Museum Triennial in 2012 and was part of Future Generation Art Prize at the Venice biennial in 2013. Tabet will participate in a group show in SMBA in September, co-curated by Muller.

After the talks in SMBA you are invited to the opening of the Exhibition Lard Buurman - Africa Junctions at the new project space for art, design and architecture at Looiersgracht 60.

Out now!

Get your copy at:

* SMBA bookstore
* Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam bookstore
* black dog publishing

Project 1975 started as a two-year program of Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. The project was set on exploring the relationship between contemporary art and postcoloniality, which gains more and more relevance to artists and thinkers in a context of a globalizing art world. It addressed key questions such as: How do artists today view the historic or contemporary acts of colonial powers? Do colonial mindsets persist ?in art and its institutions? What can replace the tacitly embraced multicultural normalization of the 1990s? These questions elicited versatile artistic and critical responses, many of which are presented and discussed in freshly released volume Project 1975 - Contemporary Art and the Postcolonial Unconscious.
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Tuesday, 18 March 2014

Time: 8 – 10 p.m.

Colour in the West was always associated with ‘the Other’, with the body of the exotic, the woman, or the child…Colour in film was a spectacle in itself and was used to capture the attention of the viewers. With commodities it worked in a similar way: Colour was an added value and a convincing selling argument. There is an equation between these exotic bodies and desirable goods. --- Alexandra Navratil*
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Date: March 13, 14, and 15, 2014
Location: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

SMBA and the Stedelijk Museum - in collaboration with ASCA/ACGS at the University of Amsterdam, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Folkwang Museum Essen, and the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam - present the three-day conference Collecting Geographies: Global Programming and Museums of Modern Art.

The conference is part of Global Collaborations, the three year program launched by the Stedelijk at the end of 2012 to explore developments in the visual arts around the world, with special focus on upcoming regions such as Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The project is based on collaborative partnerships with experimental and multifaceted art institutions around the world and includes exhibitions, publications, events, an online platform, and this upcoming conference.
read more..

Wednesday, 12 February 2014
7:30 p.m.

Language: English
Location: SMBA, Amsterdam
Free admittance, reservations through mail@smba.nl

Magazine launch of ECHOES-DiARTgonale #2 with presentations by Pauline Burmann, Bassam El Baroni and Annette Schemmel, moderated by Lucy Cotter.

ECHOES-DiARTgonale Special Edition #2 consists of contributions mainly of visual artists. Their visual and textual proposals travelled back and forth between Cameroon and Belgium, France and Germany, as well to Morocco, Senegal, Benin and Nigeria, slightly changing by every trajectory. Reverberations of historical and recent events were interrogated and reformulated, often amongst collaborators from Europe and Cameroon.
At the occasion of the launch of the magazine, a panel discussion will be held in collaboration with Enough Room for Space, the initiators of the project.
read more..