To the Rijksakademie Supervisory Board, 

We as current residents, alumni, advisors, staff, and art professionals with a personal and professional connection to the Rijksakademie, are alarmed about the rapid changes in the reorganisation and leadership positions of this most special institution. It is our opinion that opaque decision-making on your part are distorting the institutional memory of the Rijkskademie and raise serious ethical and governmance questions that need an urgent response. 

 During the course of the last 18 months, we have observed multiple staff departures, including those of Martijntje Hallman and Susan Gloudemans – two veteran staff members of the Rijksakademie – as well as the three representatives that have stepped down from your Supervisory Board. Less than six months after Hallman and Gloudemans, the announcement of Emily Pethick’s departure only further deepened our worries. All of this comes at a time when the cultural sector in The Netherlands will face severe governmental budget cuts. Likewise, substantial funding from the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, a key partner to the Rijksakademie, has not been renewed. 

Given this financial instability, we question the rushed vacancy calls for a Senior Development Officer and Support employee that were posted on December 16th and 19th with a January 9th deadline – a mere fifteen business days for receiving applications, all during the end of year holidays. We are concerned this may indicate there are pre-selected candidates for these positions, only further reinforcing a current lack of transparency at the Rijksakademie. 

We fear that all of the above reveals a lack of structural balance and an acute crisis in leadership around organisational matters. Even worse, we are concerned that decisions regarding staff and governance are being made without the best interests of the organization in mind and favoring private appeals of your representatives, with wide-reaching effects both within the Rijksakademie and far beyond in its global community. This endangers the Rijksakademie’s path forward towards a sustainable future. 

Given all the above, we ask the Supervisory Board at the Rijkskademie to uphold to the principles outlined in the Cultural Governance Code, and respond to our questions in person with a public conversation that offers transparent accountability. These are some of our main requests:

• Why has the Rijksakademie announced the departure of its entire directorial team – Martijntje Hallman, Susan Gloudemans, and Emily Pethick – within just six months?

• What is the state of the search for a new director and head of residency? 

• Why did three members of the Supervisory Board – Bregtje van der Haak, Defne Ayas, and Prof. dr. Vinod Subramaniam – step down almost simultaneously last year without any replacement? 

• Why is over half of the current Supervisory Board comprised of private sector figures in finance, real estate, and banking, with little or no artistic expertise?

• How will the Rijksakademie maintain its institutional memory in this new phase, given that the majority of staff with original or historic ties are no longer present?

Last but not least, we would like to carry out a community audit to independently assess the Rijksakademie’s financial movements over the last few years. In other words, we ask you to “open the books” of the Rijksakademie to understand decisions made on behalf of the Supervisory board. We specifically wish to elucidate any potential conflicts of interests between standing members of the Supervisory Board members, specific philanthropic sources, and allocations of funds. 

We would like to have a public meeting with you, simultaneously in-person and online, about these and other concerns we will share on Friday, January 17, 2025 at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten—the date known internationally as Art’s birthday. 

As members of the Rijksakademie community, some of whom far supersede your tenure in the Supervisory Board, we urge you to respond with the fullest transparency of the situation. We remind you that any disregard to us as an artistic community strongly runs counter to the Rijksakademie’s long standing history and reputation, which we strongly feel has veered off course in the last few years. Please respond to this communication at the earliest opportunity. 

Note: Please fill out the form below. You can sign this petition with or without your name. If you wish to have your name appear as anonymous, it would still be helpful if you designated your affiliation and years (if you feel comfortable). None of the information will be provided without your consent. We understand the sensitivity of this situation, be it for those still with active affiliations to the Rijksakademie or those participating in the Dutch cultural sector overall.