The expansion of the Experimental Colony in Frederiksoord is going fast. New exhibition conveys an oppressive sense of poverty

The official opening has now been postponed from July to the autumn, but the intention is that the public can become acquainted with the new exhibition about contemporary poverty in the summer.

An additional 220 square meters will be added at the back of the building. No fewer than 35 rooms will be furnished in this space, more about which later. The restaurant at the front will be expanded by 100 square meters. “It will be a third bigger, quite a significant expansion,” says director Friso Visser.

He says that construction started a little later due to delays in the permit process. “Then we discovered a pressure pipe in a place where we did not expect it.” Unforeseen circumstances that had to be resolved.

But now things are going fast. In the meantime, normal life continues as much as possible within the museum walls, school classes are walking around and the normal flow of tourists is slowly starting again during the spring holidays.

Director Visser notices some reluctance regarding the latter group. “The parking lot is also under renovation, I think it looks very inaccessible and the number of parking spaces is also limited,” he notes. The message is clear: the museum is open and everyone is welcome, and there are plenty of parking spaces elsewhere in Frederiksoord.

When everything is ready, the parking spaces will have been moved to the side and back of the building and the current parking lot will be a park-like area, with the artwork of Ricky Rijkenberg from Amsterdam. This will be a skeleton of a colony house, which is also a playground equipment.

Poverty then, poverty now

Then the new exhibition, because that is also being worked hard in the background. Connecting the poverty of 200 years ago with contemporary poverty is the aim of the new exhibition. “It will be a building with front doors that you can enter through. All small rooms, which gives an oppressive feeling. It also conveys the feeling of events and consequences coming your way, the trap you end up in. Poverty can happen to anyone and how do you deal with it? We want people to think about that.”

The museum also wants to explicitly draw a parallel with Johannes van den Bosch. “The question is ‘what can and should we do about it?’. We let the audience think about that, like Johannes van den Bosch 2.0. You can learn from history for the future and we can clearly demonstrate that here. It is also sad that we have not managed to eliminate poverty in 200 years.”

To get a good idea of ​​poverty today, the museum has extended its antennae extensively. “We have collected as much information as possible from experts who deal with poverty, for example from the Hanze University of Applied Sciences and the University of Groningen. We came up with themes and how you can present them.” Experienced experts also have a role. “We want four or five people to tell us how they experience poverty. That’s an exciting part. You have to do it in a good way, you don’t want to stigmatize. The input from experienced experts helps us to see what it is like to make ends meet,” says Friso Visser.

The new part will be a mix of interactive, multimedia and analogue. The development of the content is in the hands of our own curator/educator, and a designer has been engaged for the elaboration. Developing a new exhibition is a job that must have a good result immediately. “How does it come across? Does the message come out well? Does it have a head and a tail, has the reception of school groups been properly taken into account? We do not have the luxury of testing in advance. It has to be right the first time.”

Friso Visser expects that the new exhibition can be tested with the public at the end of July. “That is also necessary to eliminate the teething problems.” The expansion of the museum costs 1.3 million euros, eight tons of which is in stones and more than five tons in the museum furnishings.