Demodernising to decolonise: modern art museums in the 21st century

Charles Esche, curator and writer living in Amsterdam, questions the way in which museums of modern and contemporary art are conditioned by their modern and colonial past, and invites us to explore new curatorial strategies and proposals through the example of the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands, which he directed for 20 years.

The talk will suggest some ways in which modern and contemporary art museums are held in check by their modern pasts, and how they can still create narratives appropriate to the times and the diversity of the people they serve. It will largely use Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands as a basis to explore concrete strategies that point towards activities that are potentially propositional and pluriversal.

Questions of continual and unending processes towards decolonising from a western European positionality will be addressed, as well as the limits to such approaches. The talk will end with a brief excursion beyond the art institutional frame and potential responses from artistic thinking to the current reactionary political climate.

Curator and writer based in Amsterdam, Charles Esche is an advisor to the Jan van Eyck Academy and Professor of Contemporary Art and Curatorial Practice at the University of the Arts, London. From January to April 2026, he will be resident at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. Until 2024, he was Director of the Van Abbemuseum (Netherlands). His latest major publication is Art and Its Worlds, Afterall and Koenig Press, 2021.

He has curated several international exhibitions, including Soils, Australia and Netherlands, 2024; The Meeting That Never Was, Vilnius 2022; Art Turns, Word Turns; MACAN Museum, Jakarta 2017; Jakarta Biennale 2015; 31st Sao Paulo Biennale 2014, RIWAQ Biennale, Palestine, 2007 and 2009; Istanbul Biennale, 2005 and Gwangju Biennale, 2002.

Photo credit : © 2025 Gluklya Pershina