Cover of All that Dutch:
International Cultural Politics, 2005
Tuesday, 17 November / 16:00
Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Nedre gate 7, Oslo
www.oca.no /
info@oca.no
As part of OCA's initiative to explore models of cultural policy in relation to the funding of contemporary art by international foundations, OCA hosts this first lecture in a forthcoming series presentations on international cultural politics on Tuesday, 17 November with Gitta Luiten, Director of the Mondriaan Foundation. Based in Amsterdam, the Mondriaan Foundation encourages the appreciation of visual arts, design and the cultural heritage from the Netherlands. In 2008, the Mondriaan Foundation supported 877 projects with a total of 23 million euro. 319 international projects in 46 different countries were supported financially with a total amount of approximately 3 million euro.
As director of the Mondriaan Foundation for the past decade, Luiten has forged a unique strategy around the Mondriaan Foundation, which has strengthened its reputation as one of the leading and more dynamic models of cultural funding within Europe – one that continuously challenges traditional models of funding policy to respond to the vast changes that the fields of contemporary art and design have undergone since the beginning of the new millenium.
Luiten is the co-editor of All That Dutch: International Cultural Politics (2005), a survey of essays by international cultural practitioners who share their insights as to the validity of the integration of ideas around political, economic and societal considerations in culture or whether culture should be treated as an independent sphere of public duty.
Luiten's lecture inaugurates a programme of discussions and negotiations surveying how cultural policy is forming in various countries throughout the world in order to provide exemplary models and also express publicly how contemporary art is a part of daily life with social and political effects and implications.
Prior to her tenure as director of the Mondriaan Foundation, Gitta was a political advisor for Frederik van der Ploeg, the former State Secretary of Culture and Media of the Netherlands, and as a Press Officer for both the Dutch Council for Arts & Culture and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. She also was on the Visitation Committee for the National Public Broadcasting Organisation and currently serves on the boards of the Association of Cultural Employers and the Netherlands-China Art Foundation. Luiten received her degree in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam.
In 2007, OCA launched Kunst and Kapital as a series of talks and discussions in an effort to examine the increasingly porous sectors of private and public. How is it possible to proceed with an assumption as to behaviour of the private sector toward contemporary art without fully understanding the motives and psychologies of the private sector, especially in the unique field of contemporary culture? How do international initiatives in the field lend to understanding further the range of possible examples? The Kunst and Kapital series addresses these topics in an effort to demystify the contemporary art market while illuminating how the critical community is being steadily streamed into these new initiatives.
For press inquiries and more information, please contact Marthe Tveitan at marthe@oca.no.