Het Nieuwe Instituut – Collecting Otherwise (ongoing)

Page of the scrapbook [Work_Labour Dossier: Feminist Housing Analysis] by Lidewij Tummers, 1986. Source: Archive [Women Building Housing] / Bureau Tussen-Ruimte. Donation Lidewij Tummers, Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut

Ongoing project at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Project lead and working group member.

Collecting Otherwise is one of the research projects currently being developed by Het Nieuwe Instituut as part of the Rethinking the Collection initiative, and under the umbrella of Disclosing Architecture. This background of this initiative is the decision of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) to invest 11 million euros over the next six years in the visibility – and thus the restoration and digitisation – of the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, which is hosted and cared for by Het Nieuwe Instituut. In this context, Het Nieuwe Instituut considers it imperative to ask fundamental questions about the value and significance of the documents contained in the collection. In turn, these questions could contribute to the reorientation of notions of what could, or should, constitute heritage and archiving in specific moments in time.