Maaike Rikhof Dutch Art & Design Today

'What I'm predominately interested in, is telling stories of people that might have been overlooked. But you have to be very careful. Because not everyone has the same starting point or opinion on topics that you might want to discuss—for example, if it's about gender, a queer perspective, or a decolonial perspective. I want to present a story that feels respectful to everyone who visits a museum, but that still can be challenging for people with different views. But without scaring them away completely... Museums, in an increasingly individualized society, can offer people the opportunity and chance to come into contact with viewpoints and histories, and stories outside of their own. In this sense, the end goal, for me: it's decreasing polarization and increasing mutual understanding.'

—Maaike Rikhof

For the tenth episode of ‘Dutch Art & Design Today’, I sat down with Maaike Rikhof, who is the Curator of Modern Art at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands. Maaike studied art history at the University of Amsterdam, where she focused her research on the sociological aspects of art and received her BA and MA degrees. She also spent a year studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, which was instrumental in her focusing her work on the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, in relation to the ideas and social movements behind the artworks that were produced during those eras. Before starting in her current role at the Frans Hals Museum, Maaike spent time at the Van Gogh Museum as a researcher, and was also a curator in training at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and more recently, guest curated the exhibition ‘The New Woman’ at the Singer Laren Museum—which was on display at the museum from 13 September 2022-8 January 2023. As Maaike makes clear during the interview, she focuses her research on the ideas behind the art from c. 1880-1920—as opposed to their literal, formal aspects—in her quest to probe the depths, of the socio-political contexts that fueled the creation of art in those eras.

In this hour-and-a-half-long talk, Maaike recounts how she found her way to art history and discusses at length, how it is that she approaches her work in museums through the lens of sociology. We first discuss her childhood, and how her father—who was a medieval archivist at the Rijksmuseum—influenced her own interest in museums. She then recounts her early fascination with Netherlandish altarpieces, and a particularly memorable visible to the Hospices de Beaune in Burgundy, where she encountered Rogier van der Weyden’s ‘The Last Judgment’; and then muses on her encounter with Botticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’ at the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence; and how these experiences cemented her love of the history of the social contexts that accompany the genesis of works of art. Later, Maaike talks about her use of the digital humanities in relation to her curatorial work, and the advantages of being a digital native, in terms of the ways she makes use of databases for research, and how she disseminates her research using, for instance, digital publishing. We then discuss what it is that enthralls her, concerning museums and their ability to participate in societal discussions. And to conclude, Maaike hints at what she has planned for the Frans Hals Museum, and its collection of modern art.

You can learn more about Maaike and follow her and her work, on Instagram.

You can find John on X @johnbezold and at his website johnbezold.com.

'Dutch Art & Design Today' is published by Semicolon-Press.