AMSTERDAM — In the 1980s and ’90s, the Netherlands had a reputation as a kind of paradise for artists. Graduates of fine arts academies could receive long-term grants and special housing subsidies to support them so they wouldn’t have to get day jobs. Edgy theater groups and small contemporary classical ensembles were fully financed to create innovative and experimental work. The government even bought art directly from artists who weren’t particularly commercial, maintaining it in large storage facilities, simply to support artistic production.
That all started to change during the first decade of this century as lawmakers in the Netherlands became more conservative and budgets began to shrink. After the financial crisis hit Holland in 2008, the controversy about spending on the arts began to mount, reaching a fever pitch in 2011 and 2012, as the conservative-led coalition government took aim at culture.
As I wrote today in an article for the IHT, about two dozen cultural organizations across the Netherlands are shutting their doors as dramatic cuts to the nation’s arts budgets have begun to take effect. Dance companies, orchestras, musical heritage foundations and nonprofit art galleries, some of which have been operating for decades, are closing down.
Among the victims of the first round of cuts have been the Theater Institute Netherlands, which houses the nation’s theater museum, the acclaimed contemporary dance ensemble Dansgroep Amsterdam, and the Radio Chamber Philharmonic, a classical orchestra whose performances have been broadcast since the end of World War II.
Starting on Jan. 1 this year, federal financing for the arts dropped by 22 percent, while regional, provincial and local governments cut anywhere from 10 to 20 percent from their arts budgets, resulting in an overall loss of about €470 million in subsidies to the culture sector as a whole. Most of the country’s established institutions, like the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, are faring with slightly lower budgets, but some others have seen their subsidies vanish overnight.
“You will see that most of the institutions that will collapse or that will fall out of the system are the mid-sized or smaller ones,” said Jeroen Bartlese, secretary general of the Raad voor Cultuur, or Dutch Culture Council. “There will be fewer performances, there will be less things to see, culture will be less diverse. The Netherlands has been known as internationally as being a haven, a good place for talents to experiment, to show off, to learn and to develop their talent. I certainly hope that won’t go away, and maybe it won’t because you don’t break down a tradition that easily, but at the moment there are quite a few organizations that fall away, and that is concerning.”
Although the conservative-led government was replaced with a more moderate Dutch parliament in September, the cuts to the cultural sector have not been rolled back. And the rhetoric that was used to justify the slicing has had a demoralizing effect as well.
“The Rutte government painted artists as elitist, parasitic, sophisticated beggars, living off state subsidies, basically procrastinating,” said Ann Demeester, director of De Appel art center in Amsterdam.
Efforts to find alternative and private sources of funding for the arts have begun, but it’s unlikely that such funding will come in time to save many of the groups that have lost their subsidies already this year.
“The way it was done was just too big and too quick, which may have led to the disappearance, and the end, of some institutions,” Mr. Bartlese said. “More than was necessary, if it had been phased in properly.”
How should the country’s arts groups go about rebuilding themselves? Will they be able to find private sources of funding to fill in the gaps? Are there other regions where arts organizations have found ways to generate needed funding that can serve as models for those in the Netherlands?
