Museum MemoriesMuseum Memories

Period rooms were enjoying a revival. The Rijksmuseum had restored the Beuningkamer, an 18th-century rococo interior, and the Louvre began showcasing its collection of 18th-century decorative art in a series of period rooms and themed galleries. Where did this renewed interest come from?

In the late 19th century, a period room, with its furniture, wall coverings and works of art, was meant to give a stylistically pure impression of a specific era. But in practice, period rooms had more to say about the era in which they were created than the ones they were meant to represent. So what does museums' current interest in period rooms have to tell us about how we deal with the past?

At this evening event, the interior historian Barbara Laan outlined the rise, fall and rebirth of the period room in the western European museum and discuss some contemporary interpretations. The artist Amie Dicke and the curator and critic Michiel van Iersel took us behind the facade of the period room's perfectly reconstructed interior. Finally: what uses might be found for old interiors languishing in museum vaults? Paul Spies, director of the Amsterdam Museum, and Edwin Jacobs, director of the Centraal Museum Utrecht, discussed possible answers; Martijn Blekendaal, programme maker at NTR, acted as moderator.

Barbara Laan works in the cultural heritage field and specialises in historical interiors. She set up the research and consulting agency Laan Historische Interieurs and the foundation Stichting Historische Interieurs in Amsterdam. Amie Dicke is an artist working mainly with historical narratives, objects and interiors. Michiel van Iersel is a curator and critic and founded the Non-fiction agency and the Failed Architecture Foundation. Dicke and Van Iersel have worked together on the historical interiors of buildings including Duivenvoorde castle, the World War II safe house Castrum Peregrini, and Amsterdam's Oude Kerk. Paul Spies is director van the Amsterdam Museum since 2009. The Amsterdam Museum also governs the two historically decorated canal houses Museum Willet-Holthuysen and Cromhouthuizen. Spies studied Art History and Classical Archeology at the University of Amsterdam and wrote several publications about art and architecture in which Amsterdam often plays an important role. Edwin Jacobs (1960) is director of the Centraal Museum Utrecht since 2009. The museum developed in this period an active form of public participation, has an audience-focused approach and focuses in it's collection policy on collaboration.

Het Nieuwe Instituut's foyer hosted a small exhibition of original collection materials relating to period rooms and model interiors such as a period room in the Rijksmuseum, HP Berlage's living room for Berlin's Wertheim department store (1908), the Stedelijk Museum's exhibition In Holland staat een huis (1940), and model interiors by the design foundation Stichting Goed Wonen (1950s-60s). The installation 1:1 Period Rooms by Andreas Angelidakis will stay open late in connection with this event.