After our recent performance, This Is the Image of Your World Collapsing, we received an angry email from Andreas Blühm, the former director of the Groninger Museum. In his message, Blühm not only declared us unwelcome in the museum but also threatened to involve the police should we visit again. He stated:
“I deny you the opportunity to hold protests in our museum. If and to the extent that members of your movement gain access to and/or are in our museum, the police will be called in to remove you. In that case, we will also report you for trespassing.”
As both artists and Groningers, we view the Groninger Museum as a vital public institution—our museum—and we will continue to engage with it, critique it, and visit it as we see fit. Intimidation tactics like these only reinforce our commitment to cultural and social accountability.
To make this point clear we visited the museum with a large group, enjoying its exhibitions while celebrating our identities as Groningers and our role as critical observers of one of our region’s most significant cultural institutions. True to our values of transparency, we publicly shared our visit and Blühm’s letter on social media in a series of 3 posts during the December month. We believe in maintaining an open dialogue with cultural institutions, not private or hidden exchanges.
This activity wasn’t disobedience for its own sake but about reclaiming our right to participate in and critique a public cultural institution. We firmly believe that art and culture must stand apart from the exploitative practices of the fossil fuel industry, which has caused immeasurable harm to communities and ecosystems—including here in Groningen.
Looking ahead, we welcome the museum’s incoming directors, Roos Gortzak and Jan Geert Vierkant, who will take office on February 1, 2025. When that moment comes, we will be publicly posing a crucial question: will the new directors agree to remaining complicit in fossil industry devastation and harm, or will they summon the ethical leadership to sever those ties?
Our visit was as well a reminder to the museum and its new leadership that fossil fuel sponsorship has no place in our shared cultural spaces. We remain steadfast in our call: it’s way past time for the Groningen Museum to end its ties with the fossil gas and embrace a future rooted in justice and sustainability.
The Groninger Museum has a responsibility to its community. As Groningers and artists, we will continue to challenge it to live up to that responsibility.
Andreas Blühm’s email:
“Dear Sir/Madam,
On Sunday 20 October, several members of your movement protested in our museum. You left loudspeakers and accessories in the lockers of our museum. The request is to remove these loudspeakers and keep them removed from our building.
Furthermore, I deny you the opportunity to hold protests in our museum. If and to the extent that members of your movement gain access to and/or are in our museum, the police will be called in to remove you. In that case, we will also report you for trespassing.
In addition, we have found that your website shows images of several of our employees. Our employees have not given permission for this. You are thereby acting in violation of their portrait rights. I would like to point out that this is punishable under Article 35 of the Copyright Act. I request and, if necessary, summon you to remove the images – in which our employees are recognisably depicted – and to keep them removed. If you do not comply with this summons, I will report the matter to the police on behalf of the employees involved.
I look forward to receiving your confirmation that the images will be removed immediately.
Kind regards,
Andreas Blühm”