Things, practices & policies: relationality and the early stages of the international promotion of Dutch design, 1920s–1970s

ABSTRACT

This article takes a practice theory approach to explore the little-known history of the Dutch government practices that, between the early 1920s and mid 1970s, preceded explicit Dutch international cultural policy in organizing the promotion of the Dutch arts abroad. Advancing from an understanding of international cultural policy as a ‘hybrid’ (socio-material) practice of meaning production, it examines how those government agencies defined ‘Dutchness’ and ‘design’, and how the specificities of the things being promoted influenced those definitions. From this detailed empirical study, I propose a theorization of the relationship between policy, practices, and things as relational, meaning the understanding of things and policy as both shaping – and being shaped by – practices of international promotion. This theorization has broader relevance to cultural policy research since it suggests that policies and practices promoting different domains of culture may develop differently depending on the specificities of the artefacts that they seek to disseminate, and vice-versa.

KEYWORDS:

• Dutch international cultural policy
• Dutch design promotion
• Dutch national identity
• practice theory
• relationality

Introduction¹

Since the 1970s, ‘Dutch design’ has gradually grown into a prominent domain in Dutch international cultural policy (see e.g. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Education, Culture and Science 2020). In 1974, the Bureau Beeldende Kunst Buitenland (the Office for Fine Arts Abroad, henceforth referred to as ‘the Office’) was installed under the ministry responsible for culture as an official organ in charge of representing Dutch art and design abroad. Until 1985, its main task was to boost the international renown of contemporary Dutch artists and designers by organizing international exhibitions (Kuyvenhoven 2007). The Office’s establishment ensued from the government’s broader efforts to develop a more coherent international cultural policy (Meroz 2014). These efforts culminated in the publication of the first government document on the subject in 1970 (Ministerie van Buitenlandsche Zaken, Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, and Ministerie van Cultuur, Recreatie en Maatschappelijk Werk 1970), which some authors (e.g. Minnaert 2009, 2012, 2016) argue marks the beginning of explicit Dutch international cultural policy. Since then, various government agencies have taken over the international promotion of Dutch design.

What does ‘Dutch design’ mean? The term can and has variously been used to indicate: things made in the Netherlands; things created by Dutch nationals anywhere in the world; things, irrespective of origin, used in the Netherlands; or more narrowly, minimalist and conceptual things that represent an idealized view of Dutch identity as sober and rational (Meroz 2016, 2018). Despite the terms’ divergent meanings, the literature discussing the international promotion of Dutch design has tended to leave its object of study largely undefined (see e.g. Betsky 2004; De Rijk 2003; Huygen 2008; Simon Thomas 2008). Nevertheless, this literature advances from common essentialist premises, namely, that meaning is intrinsic to Dutch design artefacts (however authors define those meanings) (Meroz and Gimeno-Martínez 2016), and that promotion practices function as carriers that disseminate those artefacts and their meanings abroad.

In contrast to this literature, cultural theory holds that meaning is not intrinsic to things but is instead ‘socially constructed’ (Berger and Luckmann [1966] 1991). Fundamentally, cultural theory understands the perception of reality as resulting from ‘symbolic structures of knowledge which enable and constrain the agents to interpret the world according to certain forms, and to behave in corresponding ways’ (Reckwitz 2002, 245–246). In other words, cultural theory holds that humans experience reality through lenses (symbolic and not) that they themselves create (Alexander 2017). In this context, then, while things exist out there in the world, it is humans who interpret them as ‘Dutch’ and as ‘design’.

Unlike other sub-strands of cultural theory, practice theory allows for the conceptualization of things not as passive recipients but as contributors to processes of meaning creation (Haumann 2020). While most sub-strands of cultural theory locate the symbolic structures (the ‘lenses’) in people’s minds, discourses or social interactions, practice theory locates them in practices (Reckwitz 2002). What are practices? Sociologist Theodore R. Schatzki (2002, 2005) defines practices as organized ‘bundles,’ ‘sets’ or ‘nexuses’ of ‘doings and sayings’. Elaborating this definition further, Reckwitz (2002) argues that not only people but also things are indispensable components of practices, meaning that practices are inherently ‘hybrid’ (Latour 1993), which is to say, both social and material. It is important to mention that there is no consensus regarding the conception of practices as hybrid. Schatzki (2005, 11) observes that while

most practice theorists would agree that activity is embodied and that nexuses of practices are mediated by artifacts, hybrids, and natural objects, disagreements reign about the nature of embodiment, the pertinence of thematizing it when analyzing practices, the sorts of entities that mediate activity, and whether these entities are relevant to practices as more than mere intermediaries among humans.

In this article, I follow a hybrid practice theory approach, which views things and materials as intrinsically constitutive of meaning.

Taking my cue from this strand of practice theory, the aim of this article is twofold. It seeks to understand: first, how the definition of Dutch design that the Office worked with, in the context of explicit international cultural policy, was shaped by practices of international promotion; and second, how that definition was also shaped by the things that those practices promoted.² To this end, I narrow my scope to the early stages of Dutch design promotion: the little-known history of the organized government practices that, between the early 1920s and mid 1970s, preceded the Office and explicit international cultural policy in organizing the promotion of the Dutch arts abroad.

My argument proceeds as follows. The first part identifies and introduces the government agencies practicing the international promotion of the Dutch arts that preceded the Office and explicit international cultural policy. Advancing from an understanding of international cultural policy as a hybrid, socio-material practice of meaning production, I argue that although in this period there was no explicit or overarching vision about the purpose of promoting the Dutch arts abroad, nor about the government’s role in this, the government agencies’ activities and the principles guiding them can be considered as ‘practice-as-policy’. The second part examines how those practices came to define ‘Dutchness’ and ‘design’, and how the things being promoted influenced those definitions. From this detailed empirical study, the Conclusion proposes a theorization of the relationship between policy, practices, and things as relational, meaning the understanding of things and policy as both shaping - and being shaped by - practices of international promotion. This theorization has broader relevance to cultural policy research since it suggests that policies and practices promoting different domains of culture may develop differently depending on the specificities of the artefacts that they seek to disseminate, and vice-versa.

A word about sources. Scholarly attention for Dutch international cultural relations and policy has been modest; it is common for authors in this field to begin their account by remarking on the lack of available literature on the subject (Pronk 1990; Schmidt and Van Dongen 1987; Van den Berg and Kleekamp 1994; Van der Haak 1990).³ Indeed, standard works on the history of Dutch cultural policy (Van den Hoogen et al. 2014; e.g.; Knippenberg and Van der Ham 1993; Pots 2010) as well as the reviews of Dutch cultural policy published by the ministries responsible for culture (e.g. Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschappen 1998, 2002; Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschappen, and Boekmanstudies 2006, 2009) devote none or only a few pages to the international dimension. Conversely, publications about Dutch international relations and policy (e.g. Ministerie van Buitenlandsche Zaken 1950; Otten 2004; Van Ditzhuyzen et al. 1998; Zeeman 1994) rarely and barely touch upon cultural aspects. As such, it is not surprising that commentators have characterized Dutch international cultural policy as an abandoned ‘stepchild’ of foreign policy (Centrum voor Staatkundige Vorming 1971). Publications that do discuss the international promotion of Dutch culture tend to take the country’s first official document on international cultural policy in the Netherlands (Ministerie van Buitenlandsche Zaken, Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, and Ministerie van Cultuur, Recreatie en Maatschappelijk Werk 1970), published in 1970, as starting point; some trace its development back to the Second World War, but not much further back than that. Kuenen (1997), for example, asserts that ‘the end of the Second World War has been chosen as a starting point [for her survey of Dutch international cultural policy] for the simple fact that this policy did not previously exist’ (3). A small but growing number of texts touch upon some of the early stages of government organization of international Dutch arts exhibitions (Hompe 2021; Meroz 2018, 2022). Given the absence of policy documents and the limited number of studies discussing the international promotion of the visual and applied arts before the 1970s, this article turns to primary sources located at Dutch ministerial archives to reconstruct the early stages of government promotion of Dutch design abroad.

‘Doing’ the international promotion of the Dutch arts

This section identifies and introduces the three government agencies that, between the early 1920s and mid 1970s, developed regular practices of promoting the Dutch arts abroad. Like the Office, these practices were concerned with the organization of international exhibitions of Dutch visual and applied arts. As practices are bundles of doings and sayings, this section focuses on what these agencies were doing, or wished to do, in relation to the organization of international exhibitions of Dutch arts. While there was no official policy or overarching vision guiding those agencies’ activities, their undertakings were not arbitrary. Instead, they were guided by what could be called ‘principles of action’: imperatives derived from their concrete experiences with organizing Dutch arts exhibitions abroad. I discern three broad principles of action: centralization, professionalization, and materialization.

Centralization

Until the early twentieth century, government intervention in the internationalization of the Dutch arts had been haphazard and sporadic at best. Indeed, historically, the Dutch government had largely left the initiative relating to the international promotion of industry, crafts, and the visual and applied arts to private and semi-public associations (Schmidt and Van Dongen 1987), understanding its role as providing a modicum of financial support on a case-by-case basis (Eliëns 1990).⁴ Between the 1870s and the First World War, the government cautiously began to abandon its ‘politics of abstinence’, with different ministries becoming increasingly involved in the promotion of Dutch culture abroad (Secretaris-Generaal, Ministerie van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel 1908).

There were three main drivers behind the establishment of the first government agency responsible for the international promotion of the Dutch arts in the early twentieth century. The first was the proliferation of (increasingly demanding) technical requirements of international exhibitions, which made it progressively difficult for government and participants to judge the value of participating in relation to the costs incurred (Secretaris-Generaal, Ministerie van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel 1908). The second impetus was the multiplication of increasingly organized private-interest groups dedicated to regulating Dutch participation in those exhibitions.⁵ In 1905, the Maatschappij Arti et Amicitiae (Society Arti et Amicitiae) and the Schilderkundig Genootschap Pulchri Studio (Painting Society Pulchri Studio), which were some of the largest and most active artists’ associations in the organization of Dutch participation in international exhibitions, established the Comité voor Buitenlandsche Kunsttentoonstellingen (Committee for Art Exhibitions Abroad). The Committee’s aim was to centralize the numerous and disparate activities concerning the international presentation of the Dutch arts, and ‘to promote the interests of Dutch art and ensuring its worthy representation’ abroad (Comité voor Buitenlandsche Kunsttentoonstellingen [1909?]; Bestuurderen der Maatschappij ‘Arti et Amicitae’ 1921). Later, a third artists’ association, Sint Lucas (Saint Lucas), joined them (Krabbé 1922). Finally, the third incentive for structured government interference in the organization of international Dutch arts exhibitions was the controversy surrounding who had authority to represent Dutch arts and artists. While the government welcomed the move to centralise the presentation of the Dutch arts abroad through the establishment of the Committee for Art Exhibitions Abroad, the professional field did not. The principal criticism was that the Committee did not provide an accurate representation of art in the Netherlands since not all artists’ associations (and hence the artists that these associations represented) were given the opportunity to participate in the Committee (Anon n.d.). For these different reasons, some government circles started feeling that government regulation of Dutch participation in international art exhibitions was desirable (Secretaris-Generaal, Ministerie van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel 1908).

Accordingly, the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences installed the permanent Regeerings Comité voor Nederlandsche Kunsttentoonstellingen in het Buitenland (Government Committee for Dutch Art Exhibitions Abroad) under its auspices in 1921. This Committee’s tasks comprised the organization of the Dutch participation in art exhibitions abroad in such a way ‘that they uphold the name of the Netherlands abroad’ (Afdeeling Kunsten en Wetenschappen 1921), and to ‘guarantee, that for the exhibitions of Dutch art abroad only the most prominent work qualifies’ (Directie van Economische Zaken 1923). Although there was no official policy nor an overarching vision concerning either the internationalization of the arts or of government’s role in this (De Minister van Onderwijs, Kunsten en Wetenschappen [1920?]), the principle of centralization can be said to have guided the Committee’s practice. Indeed, the government only extended subsidy and support to Dutch art exhibitions abroad on condition that participants consult this Committee and abide by its advice (Directie van Economische Zaken 1923). The hope was that, as such, the Committee would ‘end the confusion that hitherto existed regarding the representation of the Netherlands in arts exhibitions abroad’ (Bestuurderen der Vereeniging ‘Sint Lucas’ 1922).

Professionalization

The second government practice dedicated to the international promotion of the Dutch arts was established to manage and fulfil the exponential increase in government commitments to organizing international exhibitions of Dutch arts in the postwar period. The Second World War and subsequently the Cold War instigated a more intense and substantial involvement of the Dutch government with international cultural relations (Ministerie van Buitenlandsche Zaken, Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, and Ministerie van Cultuur, Recreatie en Maatschappelijk Werk 1970; Pots 2010). The prevailing opinion was that an active cultural politics was necessary to restore the morality damaged by the war, promote ‘goodwill’ towards the Netherlands, and maintain Dutch political and economic influence abroad (Knippenberg and Van der Ham 1993; Pots 2010; Van Heuven Goedhart and Van Vredenburch 1946). One of the most common methods of Cold War cultural diplomacy were bilateral cultural agreements, which make the cultural exchange between two countries official (Boogaarts 1999). These promptly multiplied: from its first agreement in 1946, the Netherlands had signed twenty-two by 1970 (Ministerie van Buitenlandsche Zaken, Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, and Ministerie van Cultuur, Recreatie en Maatschappelijk Werk 1970). While these agreements are often thought of as being about the exchange of persons (for example for academic exchange or traveling artists), until at least the 1980s these agreements were also instrumental in regulating the international exchange of art exhibitions (see Hompe 2021; Meroz 2018, 2022). The multiplication of these agreements meant that the Netherlands, like many other European countries, was expected to organize and finance the promotion of its national culture abroad, and that the government ever more intensely committed itself to doing so.

However, unlike many other European countries who had a professional agency in charge of the coordination and implementation of its foreign cultural relations (such as Great Britain’s British Council, Germany’s Goethe Institute, and France’s Alliance Française), the Netherlands did not (Commissie Gevers 1993). Consequently, in the field of the visual and applied arts, multiple government agencies,⁶ private and professional associations,⁷ and a host of other actors⁸ had continued carrying out international cultural initiatives unsystematically and independently of each other despite governmental attempts towards centralization (Reinink [?] 1957). As can be expected, this disorder often resulted in overlapping and competing activities, uneven geographical distribution of Dutch culture abroad, and high costs (Giltay Veth [?] 1957).

With the aim ‘to create some order in the rather chaotic tangle of bilateral and multilateral international contacts and initiatives’ (Oxenaar n.d.) sketched above, the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences established the Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen (Coordinating Committee for International Exhibitions) under its auspices in 1958 (Ministerie van Onderwijs, Kunsten en Wetenschappen 1958).⁹ Its tasks comprised the central coordination of Dutch arts exhibitions abroad (Ministerie van Onderwijs, Kunsten en Wetenschappen 1958), including not only their content but also their technical and financial aspects (Klompé 1969). To this end, the Committee insisted that it was necessary to professionalize the government practice of organizing international arts exhibitions. Indeed, the Committee not only functioned according to highly bureaucratic procedures,¹⁰ it also lacked what it called the ‘technical apparatus’ to be able to adequately and efficiently handle the practicalities implied in the mundane organization of international exhibitions (Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen, 1971b; Werkcommissie voor coördinatie tentoonstellingen 1957).¹¹ Thus, while professionalization and pragmatism often emerged as a principle of action, it is unclear to what extent the Committee was able to put it into actual practice.

Materialization

The third and final predecessor of the Office was the Rijksadviescommissie voor de coördinatie van tentoonstellingen van Nederlandse gebonden kunst in het buitenland (Government Advisory Committee for the Co-ordination of Exhibitions of Dutch Arts and Crafts Abroad). It was established in 1966 as a sister organisation to the Coordinating Committee for International Exhibitions, likewise under the auspices of the ministry responsible for culture (Ministerie van Cultuur, Recreatie en Maatschappelijk Werk 1967). A driving reason behind its establishment was the enduring difficulty in realizing international Dutch arts exhibitions.

As we saw above, the Coordinating Committee for International Exhibitions had been established to regulate the tangle of initiatives on international Dutch arts exhibitions. However, order did nothing to help (and perhaps even exacerbated) an additional problem, namely, that the supply of Dutch cultural artefacts was not materially able to satisfy the exponentially increased demand for their exhibition abroad. Evidently, to be used for the fulfilment of bilateral cultural agreements, cultural artefacts have to actually exist and be capable of bearing the material conditions of international transport and display (Meroz 2018, 2022). However, the increased international demand for – and in time, the increased supply of – exhibitions of Dutch arts in the context of postwar cultural diplomacy depleted the quantitative availability of Dutch cultural artefacts, physically wore them out, and exhausted the government’s finances (Meroz 2022). This recurrent set of problems can be summarized as concerning the materialization of international Dutch arts exhibitions.

To deal with the problems surrounding the realization of international Dutch arts exhibitions, the Coordinating Committee for International Exhibitions discussed various strategies; a recurrent one entailed substituting the applied arts for the visual arts in exhibitions (see Coördinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen 1978a, 1978b). The Committee reasoned that the more robust material properties of the applied arts along with its lower financial value would make the exhibitions comparatively cheaper to insure, easier to transport, and more widely disseminable – and therefore a more useful tool than traditional forms of art (such as oil paintings) in fulfilling bilateral cultural agreements.¹² This move towards the applied arts can certainly be contextualized in terms of a wider turn towards social history, everyday life, and the valuation of craft as culture (Meroz 2018, 2022). Indeed, in the course of the 1960s, UNESCO broadened the narrow definition of culture to a more anthropological and democratic one to include ‘civilization as a whole’ (Ministerie van Buitenlandsche Zaken, Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, and Ministerie van Cultuur, Recreatie en Maatschappelijk Werk 1970), and the World Crafts Council was established as an international organization representing the applied arts as an expression of the greater cultural recognition that the applied arts started gaining at the time (Rijksadviescommissie voor de coördinatie van tentoonstellingen van Nederlandse gebonden kunst in het buitenland 1966). Concurrently, this broader understanding of culture in principle benefitted Dutch cultural diplomacy, since it increased the domestic cultural supply that could be used for international exhibitions while allowing the vulnerable masterpieces to remain at home; and it justified the inclusion of applied arts as culture in exhibitions representing the national culture (Meroz 2018, 2022).

The Government Advisory Committee for the Co-ordination of Exhibitions of Dutch Arts and Crafts Abroad was established to coordinate the greater volume of international exhibitions of Dutch applied arts. This Committee can be considered as the first official practice specifically dedicated to the internationalization of Dutch applied arts, and as one of the immediate predecessors to the Office for Fine Arts Abroad.

In this section I traced the government agencies that preceded the Office for Fine Arts Abroad in pursuing the international promotion of the Dutch arts. As we saw, although their activities were not regulated by explicit or overarching policies, their actions nevertheless gained some coherence by their practical experiences in organizing international Dutch arts exhibitions. While above I focused on what these agencies were doing (or attempting to do), below I trace what they were saying about Dutchness and design.

‘Sayings’ about Dutchness and design

Cultural theory approaches have focused on how images and imaginaries of the Netherlands have been discursively constructed through the selection of certain authors and works to disseminate abroad; and vice-versa, how that selection is influenced by those images and imaginaries (see, e.g., Byvanck 2005; Dellmann 2018). What this approach tends to omit, and what a hybrid practice theory approach reveals, is the role of practices and things in shaping meanings. Following this perspective, below I focus on how those agencies’ ideas of Dutchness and design were moderated not only by discourse and institutional structures, but also by mundane, practical, and material aspects that were intrinsic to their procedures of organizing international Dutch arts exhibitions.

There are some catches, however. First, the terms ‘Dutch’ and ‘design’ do not often appear in the relevant archival material before the 1970s (neither in English nor in their Dutch equivalents). It is therefore necessary to avoid anachronistically ‘transplanting into the past the hidden or potential existence of the future’, but it is also necessary to avoid the radical and ultimately uncritical position that these concepts suddenly emerged fully-formed and ex nihilo (Latour 2000, 248). As a way out of this impasse, I identify two different and recurring debate categories across those government agencies that were neither about Dutchness nor design but which, we can see with the benefit of hindsight, informed how the Office came to define those terms: the representation of the national culture, and the definition of a new and unknown field of culture. A second, and ensuing, challenge concerns precisely the aggregation of diverse arguments under these two debate categories (see Lemetcier and Zalc 2019). The clustering of rich arguments into these two broad debate categories across fifty years (1920s-1970s) implies the flattening of context-specific nuance (e.g., the peculiar differences of what ‘democratic representation’ meant in the 1920s and 1970s). While no classification can be neutral, I nevertheless consider this categorization to be well suited to the source material from the perspective of the research objective, namely, to trace the early stages of the development of ideas about Dutchness and design in the context of international promotion while avoiding anachronism.

A final consideration concerns the role of broader contexts in how government agencies elaborated their ideas about Dutchness and design. In this regard, Schatzki (2002) helpfully distinguishes between two practice theory approaches termed ‘contextualism’ and ‘nominalism’. Contextualists maintain that all-encompassing backgrounds such as economic systems and social structures determine the practices that they encompass (xiv). In contrast, nominalists hold that such autonomous backgrounds do not exist since any seemingly enveloping systems or structures are themselves assemblages produced by specific practices; therefore, so-called cultural, social, economic or political contexts are of interest only insofar as they can be empirically observable – rather than simply presumed – in the practices under investigation (xiv). I follow a nominalist approach, as I am interested in understanding how local and concrete practices construe their broader contexts ‘inside-out’ rather than trying to fit practices into existing frames of reference ‘outside-in’. Accordingly, rather than interpreting what those practices were doing and saying by referring to established and broader contexts, histories, and networks, I instead try to understand how those practices construed ideas about Dutchness and design. One significant advantage of the nominalist approach is that it potentially allows us to discover new conceptualizations of Dutchness and design, rather than simply reproducing already established, conventional accounts and histories. Thus, while debates about design and Dutchness were certainly not limited to these government agencies, and these agencies might not have been the principal historical actors in defining these concepts, in what follows I connect these agencies’ discussions to external contexts only insofar as the latter are patently manifested in the relevant archival material.

Representing national culture abroad

One of the main and most divisive issues that the agencies debated concerned representation: who and what should be included in international exhibitions about Dutch arts, who decides, and according to which principles? Although representation is not the same as national culture, following the development of this debate gives us insights into how and why the Office came to define Dutchness as it did. How so? Representation and national culture are intimately connected. Political scientist Benedict Anderson (2006) famously argued that more than just political entities, nations are ‘imagined communities’ constructed by different types of media, such as books, newspapers, maps — and exhibitions, among others. If nations are symbolic communities, cultural theorist Hall (1992, 1997) reasons, then representations do not neutrally describe but actually ascribe meanings to national cultures. Those images and imaginaries of the nation are not neutral; they are not only constructed through the specific selections of artists and artworks to promote abroad, but they in turn influence which artists and artworks are selected (Byvanck 2005; Delhaye 2009). Therefore, examining what the agencies said about representation is informative about some of the complex origins of the concept of Dutchness that the Office fleshed out in the context of explicit international cultural policy. The agencies debated representation in terms of three closely interrelated subtopics: representation of art vs artists; representing international/modern art vs the diversity of artistic currents; and democratic vs elitist representation.

Although the literature on Dutch cultural policy posits that attention for the artist – rather than for art – is a postwar development, the controversy regarding whether international promotion should focus on art or artists reigned at least ever since the organization of international art exhibitions became centralized in the early twentieth century. While the Committee for Art Exhibitions Abroad had been established by three artists’ associations, its proclaimed aim was to ensure the ‘worthy representation’ of Dutch art rather than promote the interests of Dutch artists. Indeed, in some cases the Committee even prohibited the participation of Dutch artists in international exhibitions outside of its mediation, even when artists had been directly invited (Comité voor Buitenlandsche Kunsttentoonstellingen, n.d.). However, the professional and the broader public contested the Committee’s legitimacy on the grounds that it did not provide a faithful representation of art in the Netherlands, given that not all artists’ associations – and hence not all artists—were given the opportunity to participate in the Committee (Anon., n.d.). Indeed, as we saw, the very controversy regarding the promotion of art vs artists arguably propelled the establishment of the first government practice dedicated to the organization of international Dutch arts exhibitions. Not that the Government Committee for Dutch Art Exhibitions Abroad resolved this tension: throughout its existence, the Committee was criticised by the professional and general public for having been installed independently of artists’ associations and hence for being unrepresentative of artists’ interests (Anon 1926; Centrale Archief Selectiedienst 1991; Krabbé 1922).

The second and closely related debate about representation had to do with whether the promotion of Dutch art abroad should focus on representing the variety of artistic currents in the Netherlands, or if it should exclusively focus on those artworks that contributed to the international development of art, aka modern art. Like its predecessor, the Government Committee for Dutch Art Exhibitions Abroad viewed its task as promoting Dutch art rather than Dutch artists (Z.E. [?] n.d.). Yet, subscribing to the view (which was common in Europe at the time) that the arts were essentially international, the Committee endorsed those artworks that it saw as contributing to the international development of art. Consequently, it focused on modern art to the exclusion of other artistic currents in the Netherlands (Sint Lucas 1922; Verver 1930). This caused great dissatisfaction among artists and their associations who argued that since the Committee and the exhibitions it organized were funded with public money, all Dutch artists and all artistic currents should be represented as a matter of principle (Blockmann 1926; Federatie van Hedend Beeld Kunstenaars De Branding 1926). However, as the Committee members saw it, the organization of exhibitions of Dutch art abroad had always been a source of criticism, not so much for how it was organized but for being an inherently exclusive enterprise. According to them, there was no getting away from the fact that only a select number of artworks were suitable for inclusion in a ‘representative collection’ to be displayed abroad (Audientie Comité Nederl Kunsttentoonstellingen in het Buitenland 1926).

Finally, and relatedly, was the thorny discussion about whether the representation of Dutch culture abroad ought to follow democratic principles or accept it to be an elitist enterprise by nature. The internationalization of art had become an ‘extremely difficult problem’ in the postwar period (Reinink [?] 1957). The members of the Coordinating Committee for International Exhibitions were aware that, on the one hand, artists and their associations often felt that ‘the international exhibition policy is in fact controlled by a small number of non-artistic experts’ who ‘exclusively propagate the “ultra-modern” current, as a consequence of which other [artistic] currents do not receive enough attention and are cast aside as “Vieux-jeu”’ (Reinink [?] 1957, 3). Indeed, artists’ associations were particularly wary as well as weary of internationally prominent Dutch museum curators, such as Willem Sandberg, for ‘exercis[ing] a sort of dictatorship in the international art world’ (Reinink [?] 1957, 3). Sandberg, who was director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam between 1945–1963 and an influential cultural broker in the Netherlands and abroad, did hold an explicitly elitist standpoint on the question of the international promotion of Dutch art. He criticized the Dutch practice of organizing international exhibitions by committee on the grounds that a large group comprising artists’ associations and civil servants may be familiar with the artistic situation nationally, but (unlike, e.g., the British Council) ‘do not have sufficient insight into the development of the arts in the world to assess what contribution their country could give to the development of the arts at the international level’ (Sandberg 1957, n.p.).¹³ Thus, the Committee members faced a dilemma: while aware of the professional field’s dissatisfaction with this elitist viewpoint, they also concurred that ‘it has been proven that Dutch exhibitions abroad that do not bear the “Sandberg-brand” have little chance of success’, and hence that ‘it makes little sense for the Netherlands to show its entire contemporary art in its variety: the official world will see the Netherlands as backward, the general public will not notice’ (Reinink [?] 1957, 3).

Demarcating an unknown but useful field

A second recurrent discussion preoccupying the government agencies responsible for organizing international Dutch arts exhibitions concerned the definition of a new, still-unknown, but increasingly palpable and particularly useful field for international promotion – a field that the Office would later refer to as ‘design’.

The Government Committee for Dutch Art Exhibitions Abroad had a broad understanding of art – and hence of its own remit – as comprising several, equally valuable sub-fields. Besides painting and sculpture, the committee also recognized graphic design as well as ‘utility and ornamental art (decorative art)’ (Duparc n.d.-a) as distinct disciplines and hence as sub-fields of art. Part of the reason for this broad definition of art was strategic: as discussed above, the Committee built its legitimacy vis-à-vis the general and professional public by representing ‘all directions [in art]’ (Duparc n.d.-b). In principle, to the Committee, all these sub-fields were equally deserving of international representation. In practice, however, they remained under-represented given that none of the Committee members in fact specialized in them.¹⁴

The Coordinating Committee for International Exhibitions maintained this broad understanding of the arts, but unlike its predecessor, the Committee did not view all the arts as equally fit for international promotion. The Committee distinguished between the ‘industrial arts’¹⁵ as a subset of ‘Old Art’, and the ‘applied arts’¹⁶ as a subset of ‘Modern Art’ (De Vries [?] 1957). Following from this categorization, the Committee argued that ‘Old Art’ was unsuitable for inclusion in Dutch exhibitions abroad due to the pieces’ physical fragility. By contrast, it considered more recent applied arts as eminently compatible with international promotion due to its physical sturdiness. Presumably, an additional advantage of promoting the recent Dutch applied arts was that it dovetailed with the modern ‘Sandberg-brand’ discussed above. Accordingly, as we saw above, the Committee considered developing exhibitions that comprised more applied arts and less antiques and oil paintings (Coordinatie-commissie buitenlandse tentoonstellingen 1971a; see also Meroz 2022). It is unclear whether the Committee did indeed start promoting more applied arts, quantitatively, in the exhibitions it proposed. But the main point here is that the Committee’s reasoning about this question resulted in a new way of categorizing the art field, and in the emergence of the idea of the applied arts as an independent discipline that was particularly amenable to international promotion due to, among others, its physical sturdiness.

The establishment of the Government Advisory Committee for the Coordination of Exhibitions of Dutch Applied Arts Abroad as an independent organ equivalent to the Coordinating Committee for International Exhibitions signals the entrenchment of the notion of the applied arts as a field distinct from yet equally valid to the visual arts. The Committee for the Coordination of Exhibitions of Dutch Applied Arts Abroad deliberately left its working definition of the applied arts imprecise so as to give itself room to manoeuvre (Rijksadviescommissie voor de coördinatie van tentoonstellingen van Nederlandse gebonden kunst in het buitenland 1966). Yet, taking the Triennale in Milan as example where craft and industrial design were exhibited side by side, the Committee understood the applied arts to encompass the full range of practices between those extremes, including tapestry, textile, ceramics, jewellery, glass, plastics, wood, as well as interior, graphic, product, packaging, transport, housing, and engineering design¹⁷— which now were all considered valid in principle for promotion abroad (Rijksadviescommissie voor de coördinatie van tentoonstellingen van Nederlandse gebonden kunst in het buitenland 1966).

Conceptualizing Dutch design in the context of explicit Dutch international cultural policy

These debates coalesced into the concept of Dutch design that the Office promoted abroad in the context of explicit Dutch international cultural policy. The debates about representation discussed above informed the configuration of a firm, if counterintuitive, concept of Dutchness employed by the Office. Indeed, former director Gijs van Tuyl (pers. comm., October 14, 2013) was emphatic, explaining that they ‘did not have a Dutch narrative’. Instead, the Office

selected art made in the Netherlands not due to its ‘national character’, but on the contrary, due to the extent it resonated with international artistic currents. Unlike today’s nation branding strategies, Van Tuyl believed that to successfully ‘put Dutch art in an international context’ it was necessary not to ‘stretch so much the national characteristics … [but] on the contrary … [to] stretch the common denominator—which at that time meant conceptual, minimalist, modern art’ (Van Tuyl quoted in Meroz 2014, 570).

In other words, the Office categorically subscribed to the elitist representation of art rather than to the democratic representation of artists.

Like its predecessors, the Office defined the field of design according to practical and material considerations related to the practicalities of disseminating Dutch culture abroad. Subscribing to a Bauhausian, non-hierarchical, all-encompassing idea of art, the Office understood design as a broad field of practices, all of which falling under its remit (Gijs van Tuyl, pers. comm., October 14, 2013). But design had two advantages that set it apart as a distinct field. First, the Office considered design to employ the same visual language as modern art, which in its view made it suitable for international dissemination (Meroz 2014). Yet, differently from many modern artworks, design was ‘not provocative’ in content – which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs viewed as a particularly important characteristic from the perspective of political and diplomatic considerations (Van Tuyl quoted in Meroz 2014). Second, and similar to the applied arts, design’s material characteristics of lightness, compactness, durability and portability enabled the development of a cheaper, sturdier, and more dependable form of postwar soft power cultural diplomacy than more conventional and physically fragile forms of culture, such as oil paintings (Meroz 2022; cf. Domínguez Rubio 2014).

In sum, the Office’s definition of Dutch design was the result not only of discursive construction, but also of material and pragmatic concerns emanating from concrete practices of organizing international Dutch arts exhibitions. Specifically, we saw how the Office’s seemingly idiosyncratic conceptualization of Dutchness derived from half a century of debates about national representation, and how its conceptualization of design emerged as a sedimentation of practical solutions devised to tackle the material difficulties of organizing increasingly more international Dutch arts exhibitions.

Conclusion: Theorizing things, practices and policy as relational

Based on the analysis above, I conclude by theorizing the relationship between policy, practices, and things as co-constitutive in three interconnected ways. First, the government practices in organizing international Dutch arts exhibitions before the establishment of explicit international cultural policy can be thought of in terms of practice-as-policy (see also Hompe 2021). Historically, the Dutch government’s involvement in international arts promotion had been haphazard and intermittent. However, this started changing from the 1920s throughout the 1970s, when three government agencies started developing regular practices and procedures towards the organization of international Dutch arts exhibitions. These agencies’ ‘doings and sayings’ were not guided by policy in the sense of an ‘overarching theory of action’. But neither were they arbitrary. Arguably, these agencies’ doings and sayings can be said to have been guided (which does not mean exclusively determined) by practical considerations emanating from their concrete experiences in organizing international Dutch arts exhibitions: centralization, professionalization, and materialization. This suggestion does not anachronistically extend the understanding of explicit cultural policy into the past. Instead, it extends the notion of policy from a general, singular and abstract theory of action to also encompass an understanding of practice-as-policy as comprising multiple and intersecting, local principles of action based on practical and concrete experiences. This extension transforms the conceptualization of cultural policy as a purely immaterial, arbitrary and autonomous discursive system of meaning production into an idea of cultural policy as relationally construed by the concrete practices that try to regulate the promotion of material artefacts.

Second, the concept of Dutch design that the Office came to work with was contingently defined in relation to the government practices promoting the Dutch arts abroad. As we saw above, Dutch design was not an already-formed domain to be disseminated abroad but instead was shaped by the very practices of its promotion. It might therefore seem initially that this article is advancing a cultural theory perspective, which holds that artefacts are inert and mute and only acquire meaning through their classification and organization by human actions – for example, by international cultural policies. However, the archival material discussed above proposes something else: it reveals the crucial role that material characteristics played in making only some artefacts eligible for becoming symbolically construed as Dutch design. For example, the Coordinating Committee for International Exhibitions disregarded ‘Old Art’ and only considered ‘Modern Art’ as fit for international promotion due to, among others, their opposing material qualities (fragility vs durability).

Third, rather than passive and mute receptacles of interpretations, cultural artefacts qua material things also participate in cultural policy practices of meaning production – including meanings about things. Indeed, arguably, it was the divergent material properties of artefacts themselves, and the degree to which those properties were compatible with the requirements and practices of international promotion, that allowed committees to construe distinctions between art, the applied arts, and design in the first place. These distinctions were then formalised into programmes that helped to shape the disorderly reality of cultural practices and artefacts into distinct classifications.

In sum, from a hybrid and nominalist practice theory perspective, the meanings of Dutch design do not autonomously pre-exist the hybrid practices of international cultural policy regulating them – but neither do those hybrid practices exist autonomously of the things that they seek to regulate. While these observations concerning the material-symbolic hybridity (Latour 1993) of cultural policy were derived from studying the specific case of the early stages of the promotion of Dutch design, it would be pertinent to investigate whether and to what extent they hold in the context of the promotion of other types of cultural practices, such as theatre, literature and others. Do different domains of cultural policy and promotional practices develop differently depending on the specificities of the artefacts that they seek to disseminate, and vice-versa? In closing, detailed empirical research projects into subdomains of cultural policy, as was undertaken here, are relevant not only for the little-known histories that they uncover, but also for their potential in nuancing established histories, and for the possibilities that they open for new theorizations of cultural policy, the things being promoted, and the practices employed to do so.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jan Warndorff for his tirelessly critical questions and helpful suggestions; Roosmarijn Hompe for her generous sharing of expertise and time; and the two anonymous reviewers for their probing comments and insightful recommendations. While they have all contributed to a better article, its faults remain all mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This publication is part of the project A Socio-Cultural History of Dutch Design, 1945-2010 with project number [017.008.090] of the research programme Mozaïek which is (partly) financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Notes on contributors

Joana Meroz

Joana Meroz is assistant professor of Design Culture Studies at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Her research bridges design history and design culture studies, the environmental and the digital humanities, new materialism and ethnographic theory. She is interested in how the intersection of materials, mundane practices and environments enables specific ideas and artefacts to be produced, collected, displayed and circulated as ‘design’, while ruling out others. Her work has been published in The Design Journal, Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, The Journal of Design History, Disegno: Journal of Design Culture, Kunstforum, and Writing Visual Culture. She has also contributed chapters to edited volumes such as Connected World Insights from 100 Academics on How to Build Better Connections (VU University Press, 2023); Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Exchanges through Art, Architecture, and Design 1945-1985 (Bloomsbury, 2022); Design Culture: Object and Approach (Bloomsbury, 2019); and The Routledge Companion to Design Studies (Routledge, 2016), among others. Currently, she is editing the book Studying Design Cultures in the Anthropocene (Zazie Edições). She is also a PI of the research projects Decolonising Sustainability Transitions Research in Practice, and Sustainable for Students, Staff, Society: A Comparative Pilot Study for Incorporating Inclusive Sustainability Transitions in Arts & Humanities Curricula.

Notes

1. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are the author’s. Original orthography of the Dutch original texts was maintained.

2. I am not suggesting that international cultural policy is the only or most influential practice in the construction of ideas about Dutch design. Indeed, practices in diverse institutional contexts such as museums, educational institutions, professional design associations, and others may be as, if not more, influential. Further research into them is therefore warranted, but fall beyond the scope of a single article.

3. Master dissertations form the exception to this rule.

4. The Dutch participation at The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations held in London in 1851 is a representative example of the Dutch government’s unstructured involvement in the promotion of Dutch applied arts and industry abroad. As design historian Titus Eliëns (1990) recounts: ‘The Dutch government … did not wish to get involved with the Dutch entry and instead asked De Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Nijverheid en Handel [The Netherlands Association of Industry and Commerce] to create a committee for the purpose. … The financial scope was minimal … [and was provided] only after the committee complained to the government’ (60–61).

5. Examples of these associations were the Nederlandsche Vereeniging van Exposanten (the Dutch Association of Exhibitors) and the Algemeene Vereeniging voor tentoonstelling belangen (the General Association for Exhibition Interests). Their main activities consisted in the organization of Dutch participation in international exhibitions and the provision of information about international events through newsletters and journals. The General Association for Exhibition Interests published announcements on its Tentoonstellingscourant (Exhibitions Newsletter), and the Maatschappij der Nijverheid (Applied Arts Society) in its journal.

6. The departments in central government most involved with the internationalization of the arts were the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Directie Voorlichting Buitenland (Foreign Information Directorate) and the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences’ afdeling Buitenlandse Betrekkingen (Foreign Relations Division), although occasionally other ministries, particularly Economic Affairs, were also involved (Schmidt and Van Dongen 1987). In 1965, the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences split into the Ministry of Education and Sciences, and the Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Society. Each ministry established a Centrale Afdeling Internationale Betrekkingen (Central Department of International Relations) to communicate about the internationalization of the arts. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also had a department responsible for international cultural policy: the Directie Culturele Samenwerking en Voorlichting Buitenland (Directorate Cultural Collaboration and Foreign Information). The Interdepartementale Coördinatiecommissie voor Internationale Culturele Betrekkingen (Interdepartmental Coordination Committee for International Cultural Relations) was responsible for coordination between the three departments as well as for the drafting and execution of policy (Ministerie van Buitenlandsche Zaken, Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, and Ministerie van Cultuur, Recreatie en Maatschappelijk Werk 1970). Other bodies involved with the internationalization of the Dutch arts included but were not limited to the Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst (Government Information Service); the diplomatic and consular corps; and the Ministry of Education, and Arts and Sciences’ ‘own’ cultural attachés (Van Heuven Goedhart and Van Vredenburch 1946, 33) (Giltay Veth [?] 1957).

7. These included but were not limited to: the Vereniging van Beoefenaars der Gebonden Kunsten (Association of Practitioners of the Applied Arts), the Centraal Orgaan voor het Scheppend Ambacht (Central Organ for Creative Crafts), the Genootschap Samenwerkende Ambachtskunstenaars (Society Cooperative Craft Artists), and the Instituut voor Industriele Vormgeving (Institute of Industrial Design).

8. These included but were not limited to: STICUSA; municipal, provincial and national museums; the administrator of the Van Gogh collection; the art market; artists’ associations; and municipal organizations, among others (Giltay Veth [?] 1957).

9. The Coordinating Committee for International Exhibitions seems to have been preceded by another committee initiated in 1946. That committee is referred to by different names, such as the Voorlopige Commissie Buitenlandse Tentoonstellingen (Provisional Committee for International Exhibitions). Fransje Kuyvenhoven does not mention this provisional committee in her authoritative book on the history of state art purchase and exhibition De staat koopt kunst [The State Buys Art] (2007), but Roosmarijn Hompe (2021) does in her discussion of Dutch postwar international cultural policy. Due to unclarity about the Provisional Committee for International Exhibitions, I do not examine it as a distinct government practice even though it also concerned itself with the organization of international Dutch arts exhibitions. About the Provisional Committee for International Exhibitions, see Inv. 839–846, access no. 2.14.73, National Archives, The Hague, The Netherlands.

10. Kuyvenhoven (2007) describes the procedures according to which the committee functioned thus: ‘This committee conveyed all ideas about presentations abroad (and vice versa about foreign applications for activities in the Netherlands) to the Central Department of International Cultural Relations. The latter informed the minister, who then asked one of the purchasing committees to buy the art needed. After the purchase, the artworks went back to the International Cultural Relations Department, which outsourced the production of an exhibition to the NKS [The Netherlands Art Foundation] or to the ministry’s Visual Arts and Architecture Department. After the exhibition’s tour ended, the works returned to the DRVK [Dienst voor ‘s Rijks Verspreide Kunstvoorwerpen]. [It was a] strong example of departmental bureaucracy’ (201–202).

11. Indeed, since 1945, the practical organization of Dutch arts exhibitions abroad – including finances, storage, packing, transport, insurance and customs – had been managed by two secretaries, namely Ms Rutten and Ms Ten Holte (De Vries, n.d.; Hompe 2021).

12. In a previous publication that discusses the material and environmental difficulties of realizing international Dutch arts exhibitions in the postwar period, I subsumed the applied arts under the term ‘design’ (see Meroz 2022). However, the present article keeps the two terms separate since one of its main objectives is precisely to trace the processes through which the notion of ‘design’ emerged partly in response to such practical difficulties.

13. It is noteworthy that Sandberg himself had been a member of the Provisional Committee for International Exhibitions.

14. To make up for this deficiency, special committees were to be appointed for exhibitions in these areas in collaboration with the Vereeniging voor Ambachts- en Nijverheidskunst (Association for Craft and Industrial Art) (Duparc, n.d.-a).

15. In Dutch: ‘kunstnijverheid’.

16. In Dutch: ‘toegepaste kunst’, also referred to as ‘gebonden (beeldende) kunsten’.

17. The Coordination Committee for the Exhibition of Applied Arts Abroad translated ‘gebonden kunsten’ as ‘arts and crafts’ rather than as ‘applied arts’. However, today ‘arts and crafts’is closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movements that emerged in the nineteenth century, which in Dutch is often referred to as ‘kunstnijverheid’. Since the term ‘gebonden kunsten’ (‘bound arts’) was mostly used to refer to newer twentieth century practices rather than to their older counterparts, I translate ‘gebonden kunsten’ as ‘applied arts’.