NXT museum in Amsterdam-Noord files for bankruptcy, plans restart
The NXT Museum on Asterweg in Amsterdam-Noord has filed for bankruptcy for its commercial entity, Digital Art Museum B.V., citing lingering financial pressures from the Covid-19 pandemic. The museum is preparing for a restart, museum founder and director Merel van Helsdingen said in an interview with the NL Times.
Van Helsdingen said the museum will remain open for at least the next two weeks, including a concert scheduled for Wednesday, while the team works on a business model that could allow them to announce a fresh start before Christmas.
On the debt, Van Helsdingen said among the biggest issues is the “massive, lingering financial debt” from during the coronavirus pandemic, when the museum took advantage of programs to defer taxes, subsidies, or loans to cover salaries, and bridge loans from both government offices and commercial parties. But the timing of their corporate registration meant they were unable to settle many of these debts and remained in a position where they had to pay back the entire sum.
Founded in 2019, the NXT Museum focuses on new media art at the intersection of art and technology. Over the past five years, it has presented large-scale exhibitions and developed programming spanning art, music, technology, performance, and education.
Regarding the museum’s future, Van Helsdingen said a restart will mean rethinking its model. “A restart means we would really take a new look at the model. The whole landscape was different when we launched in 2019. Now, there are more subsidies and funding for immersive and digital media, as well as to push the tech sector,” she said.
She also highlighted changing tourism patterns. “I think what we’ve really seen is a big shift in the type of tourists in the city. The higher-spending Asian and American tourists we normally see are no longer here, or there are far fewer of them,” Van Helsdingen said. “But there’s more European tourism, which has meant less spending on arts and culture.”
At the same time, Van Helsdingen cited research showing that younger generations tend to prefer social-media-driven experiences, often queuing for trendy spots rather than cultural institutions. She said this shift has affected her business and other museums. “In general, cultural spaces are kind of seeing the need to tap into [more Instagrammable] options, but I don’t want to build a business on that. I want to push development in the arts. I’m not going to create a space for TikTok lines,” she said.
“A restart means we would really take a new look at the model. The whole landscape was different when we launched in 2019. Now, there are more subsidies and funding for immersive and digital media, as well as to push the tech sector,” she said.
The team plans to take better advantage of their structure, combining the commercial limited liability business running the museum with the nonprofit foundation focused on cultural development, commissioning artistic research, and setting up artist residencies. That means the museum will not have to rely entirely on ticket sales to make a wider contribution to the arts, while also allowing them to spread out both income and risk.
Van Helsdingen insists the restart will work because the world now wants more immersive art and has developed a growing taste for new media projects. “We were potentially a bit ahead of the game, but now funding is there for these types of spaces. So we can keep going and keep pioneering,” she said. “We will have a very fruitful future in an industry that is the most exciting in the arts.”
