You have probably seen it plenty of times on social media: the vaccination debate. After two years of COVID and more than half a year after the first COVID-vaccine came out, the discussion is all too familiar and still so topical. Especially the smaller group of fanatical anti-vaxxers are clearly heard and seen on social […]
What do you do when you don’t trust your partner and want to make sure they’re not cheating on you? Do you look through their phone? As those devices are relatively new, that has not always been possible. For a long time, people used other means to control their lovers, like a chastity belt. Or […]
Kiki Ernst The original goal when visiting the Tropenmuseum was to see their exhibition ‘Genderful World’. However, when climbing the stairs to the top floor something else caught my attention, stopping me in my tracks. A tv screen was showing a Dutch, black spoken word artist talking about the way the Dutch history of slavery […]
On the 31st of march 2001, history was written in the city hall of Amsterdam. The first legal gay marriages had just been performed as the world watched the Netherlands in awe. The event had been in the making for a long time and press from all over the world came to report on this […]
When asked about Vincent van Gogh, most people answer: he’s the crazy painter that cut off (part of) his ear, right? Although he’s best known for his work, his personal anguish comes a close second. We know a lot about his life because a great deal of the letters that he wrote have been preserved: […]
Amsterdam is a modern city, but many details refer to its long past. We see some old buildings and the canals, without directly thinking what they could tell us about their history. One history we especially do not associate with the Netherlands is slavery. All of this happened on the plantations in the Americas, or […]
Since my first visit to the Hermitage Amsterdam in 2014, I always make a small detour through the semi-permanent collection of the Amsterdam Museum wing. The exhibition Portrait Gallery of the 17th Century offers an extensive overview of the evolution of Dutch regents group portraiture.Standing in one of the massive rooms with group portraits from […]
What is the difference between a man who is missing an eye and is walking with a walking frame, and a man who is missing an eye and is walking with a walking frame in an uniform? Just like sex, war sells. In the Netherlands there are approximately fifteen major museums about the Second World […]
‘’If you start looking into it, you can find in the whole of the Netherlands echoes of that time’’ says project leader of Mapping Slavery, Nancy Jouwe at the publishing event of Gids Slavernijverleden Nederland. ‘’There were no slave markets or plantations in the Netherlands, but you have to see it bigger: it was a […]
Nowadays street names, statues and buildings are part of a heated debate about how we deal with our slavery history. Activists and some experts plead for more attention to the more controversial side of the persons we named our streets and buildings after and who we have literally put on a pedestal, like Peter Stuyvesant. […]