KNOWLEDGE, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

‘Cultural development is part of a broad academic education for students,’ says Hendriekje Bosma, who since 1986 has been the curator of VU University’s Exposorium
exhibition space and conservator of the VU art collection. And that is precisely why the VU developed its own art policy for students as well as for staff members and visitors
when construction began back in 1967 in the Buitenveldert polder, a place devoid of all cultural facilities. To this day, that art policy consists of the same three components. The most important part of the ‘corporate identity’ is the Exposorium, which organizes five
exhibitions per year.

In addition, the VU loans out commissioned artworks to liven up the sober work environment in the staff offices, corridors and conference rooms. For that purpose, the
Art Lending Program was also set up in 1967, including works from the VU’s own collection as well as works on loan from the present-day Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (INC) and BKR works from the city of Amsterdam.

The roots of the VU collection itself are even older, explains Bosma. Ever since the VU was founded in 1880, grateful former students, professors and interested parties have left their collections to the VU. The VU Art Collection* is modest in scope and comprises some 1200 works by international and Dutch artists. The nice thing about the collection, feels Bosma, is that it has grown organically. It includes religious tableaux, portraits of professors, a still life by Henk Helmantel, but also conceptual works by Carel Visser, mystical colour paintings by Toon Teeken and a sculpture by Tom Claassen, which plays with gravity and the human dimension. At present the collection is undergoing a reorientation. The Art Lending Program no longer loans out works for the private offices of staff members. A decision has been

made to concentrate on showing art in representative public spaces in terms of both acquisitions and assignments. Moreover, the collection was transferred at the beginning of 2010 as an official study collection to the ‘academic and cultural heritage’ cluster of the University Library VU Special Collections. A fine development, thinks Bosma. ‘There, the collection is more accessible and a better rationalization can be found for the collection profile, based on relations between art, research, education and society.’

A walk through the main building shows the extent to which the art corresponds to the identity of the various faculties. A large sculpture on the different dimensions of time, by Arjanne van der Spek, graces a corridor of the Faculty of Arts. A dreamy form experiment by Arie de Groot hangs in the Faculty of Science. Hanging in the public spaces are works of a general societal nature. Enormous photo portraits in the lifts of the main building reflect the multicultural student population. A large painting by Gé-Karel van der Sterren gives a cheerful impression at first glance, and for those who wish to look further offers a deeper level of environmental and social criticism.

A book was recently published on corporate collections in the Netherlands in which, among other things, it was claimed that corporate collections do not have enough of
a profile. Nonsense, feels Bosma. ‘I suspect that people do not know these collections very well. I think they actually are tremendously diverse in their specializations, with important pieces that are of great value for Dutch cultural heritage.’

* VU University Medical Center has had its own collection of contemporary art since 1995.