After ten years, Hank Peters says goodbye to Museum Collection Brands. The museum manager and former chairman will close the door behind him on December 31. He thinks it was nice. “I’m now 78, so you have to know when to stop. Otherwise you become part of the furniture,” he says with a smile.
When Peters came in after his retirement as municipal manager in 2014, he found an organization that was driven by enthusiasm, but was also searching. “The financial management was simple: was there money in the account or not? There was no budget, no clear direction.” After an initially strong start, visitor numbers declined.
According to Peters, the core of the problem was in the presentation. “We looked at what was in the collection and we turned it into an exhibition. But you have to start with the visitor: who do you want to appeal to and why would someone come here?” With around 70,000 objects (including 30,000 books), the museum was a bit overwhelming at the time, Peters thinks.
Peters was in favor of making clearer choices. Show less, tell more, was the idea. “It had to be less about the stuff and more about the stories behind it.” That change of course paid off.
What exactly Collectie Brands is remains perhaps the most difficult question that Peters has pondered over the past ten years. At the same time, he experienced that it is precisely this elusiveness that makes Brands so unique. This became clear to him when an international researcher described Collection Brands as ‘the endless curiosity of a man’. “I thought that was wonderful,” says Peters. Because that’s where you immediately get hold of Jans Brands. “But you still haven’t told us what this museum actually is,” he laughs.
That is why the rate has been tightened in recent years. The museum focuses more emphatically on the history of Southeast Drenthe. Exhibitions about the industrialization of Southeast Drenthe and the exhibition Royal Life around the royal visit proved to be real crowd pullers.
In recent years, the museum has faced significant challenges in terms of finances and subsidies. In 2024, the municipality of Emmen announced that it wanted to phase out the annual subsidy for the museum, because visitor numbers were lagging behind and the museum lacked a clear image. That hit Peters hard. “Furious, yes,” he says. “That’s putting it nicely.”
Just when the museum was trying to take steps forward with an expansion of the exhibition space, he felt he was being pushed back. “That decision was later reversed. But I found the way it went difficult to digest.”
However, the ambition to grow to 10,000 visitors remained unachieved. The peak year before corona had 7,500 visitors, and now the museum is on the rise again with an expected number of around 8,000 visitors. “The trend is rising and we are trying to maintain it.” A task that will also fall to Peters’ successor, who is not yet known.
He is not saying goodbye to the museum world completely, because he remains active as chairman of the Stedelijk Museum Coevorden. He would also like to do one job there: making the Arsenal fully available for the museum.
“There are currently other parties involved, such as the library, but it will be placed elsewhere. Then the museum can really stretch its legs there.” Peters mainly spends the extra free time on writing. His first collection of short stories has now been published, a second is in preparation.
As far as he is concerned, the power of Collectie Brands lies in that combination: the historical and the curious. He calls the absolute showpiece the feudal register, which is almost three centuries old, in which the feudal lords of the Utrecht bishop Floris van Wevelinchoven are recorded in the Oversticht. “You can draw a line from then to now. What was that register other than a precursor to the land registry or a library administration?”
At the same time, Peters can enjoy the apparently simple objects, such as a set of uranium glasses that glow green under black light. “What’s the point? No idea. But Jans collected it.” It is precisely that mix, says Peters, that makes Brands so special.