For the National Collection, Het Nieuwe Instituut has acquired an interior model by architect and artist Theo van Doesburg. It is a design for Café Aubette, one of the most important architectural projects of De Stijl, the art movement of which Theo van Doesburg was the figurehead. With this radical design, Van Doesburg no longer made a distinction between architecture and painting.

The Architecture of Staged Realities opens in Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on 4 September 2021. In this exhibition, curator Saskia van Stein explores the current social and cultural impact of Walt Disney.

More-than-Human has been selected as one of the Best Dutch Book Designs of 2020! Het Nieuwe Instituut congratulates designers Adriaan Mellegers and Vanessa van Dam, printer Cassochrome and the entire team.The book includes visions by various authors on a more equal and climate-fair world: a world in which the connections and conflicts of humans and non-human species are no longer approached only from the human perspective. The book was published in collaboration with the Office for Political Innovation, the Serpentine Galleries' General Ecology and the Manifesta Foundation.

A large part of the archive of interior architect Cora Nicolaï-Chaillet has recently been digitised as part of the Disclosing Architecture programme. Almost seven metres of archival materials have been translated into 9490 digital files. The digitisation of this archive, one of the few archives in the National Collection created by a woman, fits with our ambition to reveal non-dominant perspectives in architectural practice, thereby linking the collection to socially relevant themes such as gender issues and women in design.

The graphic identity that Hilde and Janna Meeus of Meeus Ontwerpt have developed for the Network Archives Design and Digital Culture (NADD) is also a small, fragmented history of Dutch typeface design. Graphic identity becomes type archive.

Maintaining an archive is much more than just passively storing an end result. For designers and digital culture makers, there is great added value to be found. Not only is there inspiration to be gained from the archives of others, but creating your own archive can advance your own practice or discipline, providing space for reflection in years to come.

On 17 December 2020, the Network Archives Design and Digital Culture was officially launched, with an online event to introduce the network's programme of activities. Watch it on this page.

The Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has commissioned Het Nieuwe Instituut to undertake a study into a potential collection policy for archives relating to garden architecture and landscape architecture. There is currently no clearly defined repository for these materials. This makes it difficult for them to find their way to cultural institutions, with the attendant risk of their becoming fragmented or lost.

Jessica de Abreu, Michiel Huijben and Femke Dekker are the three selected artists for Open Archive 2020-21, which starts in December 2020. Open Archive's focus this year is on a strong multidisciplinary vision for the creative reuse of archive material. Open Archive is an initiative of Het Nieuwe Instituut, The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the International Institute for Social History.

How does artificial intelligence (AI) view a digital archive? Does it see connections that we don't see? What patterns does it reveal? Can AI be a guide, or a curator? Does it know what we're looking for better than we do ourselves?

Want to show your work in a museum location during Art Rotterdam? Here's your chance to be seen in the top-floor galleries of Het Nieuwe Instituut!

From 2021, Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam will move forward as a national heritage institution with assignments relating to the Dutch basic cultural infrastructure (BIS). Within the cultural infrastructure, Het Nieuwe Instituut forms the national memory of the design sector and aspires to shape a strategy aiming at innovation and based on the pillars of sustainability, usability and visibility. Now that Guus Beumer has, after eight years, successfully realised this ambition for the institute, and is approaching statutory retirement age, he will step down as general and artistic director from May 2021.