Talking with Merel van der Vaart – City History Curator at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam

Merel van der Vaart (City History Curator at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, The Netherlands) is the second guest of the new column “Talking with the chef“, following the launch with Eike Schmidt.

CultureLabs investigated what is the role of a city history curator and her recipes about social and cultural innovation.

“My job is to work with historic collections but also to meet people in the city and find out the histories they would like to see represented“.

In the last two years the museum has decided to focus more of being a museum of people of Schiedam embracing a more participatory approach, working more on the historic collection and working with lots of partners.

This journey started with an exhibition about banners to the recently open “Post/delete”, a project started by two seventeen-years-old students from a local high school that could not assume the museum said yes to a body and selfie images exhibition.

What are the advices to work with a participatory approach? Be very open in your communication, be very open in your expectation, and mind the languange you are using because it could not have meanings outside the museums.

Follow this and much more in our conversation with Merel van der Vaart!