Slavery exhibition planned for Rijksmuseum in 2020

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is planning to hold an exhibition on the Netherlands' slavery history in 2020, director Taco Dibbits said to the Volkskrant on Friday. "In good and bad ways, it is all part of it and all must be shown", he said.

The Rijksmuseum manages several objects that refer to the history of slavery. These include dioramas made of slave plantations, etchings and paintings depicting slaves and child slaves as servants in portraits of citizens. The museum also has a number of artworks showing the darker side of Dutch seafaring.

According to the newspaper, Dibbits is choosing to break a kind-of tradition upheld by previous directors to give less attention to the dark side of Dutch history. For example, former director Wim Pijbes called the Rijksmuseum the "treasury of the Netherlands". Dibbits wants to show where the Dutch got some of those "treasures", the newspaper writes.

Wayne Modest, head of the Research Center for Material Culture of the National Museum of World Cultures, is helping with the exhibition.