About Us

The Boekman Foundation is an independent intermediary between interested parties and stakeholders from the public administration, science companies and the cultural sector. An unique center for policy advisors, administrators, politicians and managers, for researchers, teachers and students from various disciplines, and for employees of art institutions, artists and journalists.

As a knowledge center, our working area includes the art and cultural policy of governments, public and private financing of art, socio-economic and legal aspects of the arts and the artist profession, copyright, management, marketing and sponsorship in culture, cultural organizations and events, art programming by broadcasters, cultural tourism, art and culture education, amateur art, art education, cultural participation and art criticism.

The Boekman Foundation was founded on December 9th,  1963 by initiative of the Federation of Artists’ Associations as a scientific institute for research into matters concerning art policy. The foundation is named after Emanuel Boekman (1889-1940), SDAP alderman for art affairs in Amsterdam and promoted to the thesis Government and art in the Netherlands.

Members of the Supervisory Board operate in the social sectors of government and policy, education and research and art and culture.

As of 1 January 2018, economist Coen Teulings has been appointed as the new chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Boekman Foundation. He succeeds Victor Halberstadt who has held the presidency since 2009.

There are currently no vacancies available.

Office

Monday to Friday between 09.00 and 17.00.

Library

Monday to Thursday between 10.00 and 17.00 (by appointment).

The Boekman Foundation is closed on:

Good Friday
Easter Monday
King’s day
Liberation Day
Ascension Day
Whit Monday
December 23th untill first of January

As an independent knowledge center, the Boekman Foundation conducts research into trends and developments in the cultural sector and cultural policy. We explore and schedule themes on our own initiative, but also conduct research in collaboration with or on behalf of other organizations. Our goal is to increase and spread knowledge of the cultural field as much as possible, including in Boekman or independent publications and in meetings.

We are available for research assignments that fall within our field of activity and can draw on this from a broad knowledge of cultural data, an extensive and relevant library collection, and broad research experience.

Examples of projects that we carried out are:

• an exploration of policy for specific cultural sectors as formulated in other countries (commissioned by the Council for Culture)
• mapping the notion of neighborhood culture and how this manifests itself in the Netherlands (commissioned by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds)
• pilots with which new (numerical) ways have been developed to visualize the value of culture (commissioned by Brabantstad)