In the twentieth century, design underwent furious development. The result has been a dazzling array of highlights in areas from fashion to typography. And yet the Netherlands has no design museum.
Instead, our material design heritage is distributed among a variety of institutions, such as Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, Arnhem’s Open Air Museum, the Audax Textielmuseum Tilburg, and the Aviodrome in Lelystad.
Placing designs in individually selected contexts helps to bring design history to life. On the other hand, you might run across the same objects several times in several places or be forced to visit multiple institutions to see a particular designer’s work.
The Netherlands’ lack of a design museum puts it at risk of paying too little attention to its design and fashion heritage and history. We cannot take for granted that important archives will be preserved or that gaps in the national memory will be filled.
Through its Heritage and History programme, Premsela makes a broad audience aware of the importance of design heritage and history.
Ricardo Burgzorg
Esther Cleven
Rob Driessen
Ineke Hans
Chris Reinewald
Theo Thomassen