NEMO Annual meeting 2005
Country report Netherlands (december 2005/January 2006)
The Netherlands Museums Association
The Museums Association is undergoing a difficult re-organisation process. Part of this is as a result of a merge between the Association and the Museumcard foundation in 2003. Part of this is also in anticipation of a grant reduction of 25% of the total budget by 2008 when the Ministry of Culture will no longer support the Association in its work. Instead a new organisation including the archives, archaeologists and built heritage umbrella organisations is to be founded by 2008 and is to take over whatever public programmes were up until then executed by these separate institutions.
The Association was founded in 1926 and in its 80th year it wants to continue and to reorganise itself so that it can exist as an organisation independent of government grants. The Association hopes to appoint a new director in the course of the second halve of 2006.
ICOM Code of Ethics and museum registration
The new ICOM Code of Ethics is about to be launched in its Dutch translation. In the area of museum registration, the second phase of the registration process is about to start and some museums that received registration five years ago will have to undergo a check if they still comply with all the standards set.
New national policies
On the policy side, the Minister of Culture has published the first (short) museum policy in over twenty years. It emphasizes a more competitive situation for (national) museums receiving grants for special projects and it also aims to include a wider non-traditional museum audience as one of its primary targets.
Some of members of parliaments have made suggestions for free access to museums. Museums have protested against both the new policy and the free-access proposal. The first because it forces museums into a direction they feel goes against the essential meaning of their existence, the second because the proposals for free access are not matched by funding to cover the loss of entrance fees and the increase in maintenance costs.
Margriet de Jong