8 APRIL T/M 6 AUGUST 2023
The exhibition School: In Love, Bored & Overslept is a photographic journey through 150 years of education and a trip down memory lane back to everyone’s own school days. To zoom in on what makes this period of our lives so unforgettable, this exhibition brings together 150 years of photographs of schools. Despite criticism of the state of Dutch education, the photographs in the exhibition mostly reveal a world characterised by progress, emancipation and safety.
The exhibition is an ode to schoolchildren and is full of recognisable situations: daydreaming during class, playing in the playground, waiting to be picked for a sports team, and the class portrait. Through some 150 photos, the visitor (re)experiences an ordinary school day: from cycling to school early in the morning until the last bell.
The exhibition brings together historical photographs by, among others, Eva Besnyö (1910-2003), Fred Fischer (1905-1981), Cas Oorthuys (1908-1975), Willem van der Poll (1895-1970) and Jutka Rona (1934-2016) and works by contemporary photographers, including Reinier Gerritsen (1950), Justin Jin (1974), Ellen Kok (1958), Martine Stig (1972) and Raimond Wouda (1964), including commissioned and self-initiated projects.
School as a place for progress and emancipation
Looking at 150 years of photographs taken in schools in the Netherlands, the overseas territories and the former colonies provides a fascinating picture of progress, emancipation and changing views of education. Blackboards and chalk have been replaced by interactive whiteboards, and the slate has made way for the laptop. We see a shift from the all-knowing teacher who is in charge to pupils who have to take control of their own learning process. We witness the changing relationship between teacher and pupil. The teacher, who is now more often a woman, has moved from the front to the middle of the classroom. The pupils also move more freely through the space and seem to appropriate the school as a place where they spend the day. They are more likely to respond to the teacher and demonstrate if they disagree with something.
What has not changed and what was highlighted during the coronavirus crisis is that schools, despite all the technology that make distance learning possible, is indispensable as a physical meeting place for a healthy society.
Vocational education
Various forms of vocational education have a prominent place in the exhibition. This is a conscious choice by the guest curator, Dirk Kome: ‘We should no longer speak in terms of lower and higher streams of education. Everyone has their own talent, which should be appreciated by society.’ We see photographs taken in junior technical schools, where young people work on cars, or study for a career in agriculture, highlighting the current severe shortages in candidates for the practical professions.
Back in time
The exhibition also features a selection of photographs of school interiors and exteriors from the 19th and early 20th centuries: a group of children playing in a school playground in 1890 captured by Jacob Olie (1834-1905), food being served at a school on Alberteimsplein in The Hague, a large group of children lining up for school in Kladar (New Guinea), a Roman Catholic mission school in Paramaribo (Suriname), and a group of boys wielding hammers in the blacksmith shop at a time when boys were trained to practice the same trade as their fathers.
Note for publication
For more information, extra press images and interview requests:
Press department | Annemarie van den Eijkel | 06 42 21 62 72 | avandeneijkel@kunstmuseum.nl
