‘BLUE DOTS’ AT THE STEDELIJK MUSEUM REWRITES WHAT COUNTS
words by VERONICA TLAPANCO SZABÓ
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you read Blue Dots? When I first saw the exhibition title, my mind leapt to something sweet, maybe a touch of pointillism or a charming polka dots… But the more I read, a greater truth about the history of museums revealed itself. Around the Cold War, the ever-organised Dutch government, introduced a system that required museums to categorise their collections in case an evacuation became necessary. The solution? Little “evacuation dots,” which served to rank which pieces should be saved first: red for “very important,” white for “important,” and blue for “less important.”
Else Berg, Vrouw met gitaar, 1929. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and backside with blue dot at the top right.
all images courtesy of the STEDELIJK MUSEUM
This is my first time hearing about this system and thanks to curator Nadia Abdelkaui, who joined the Stedelijk team in 2024, this long-forgotten system has now blossomed into a full exhibition. She stumbled upon it while researching the collection, revealing just how many hidden corners of art history we’ve yet to illuminate. As she explains:
“This system was new to me, and we had forgotten that, at the time, this was standard practice. I immediately dived in, curious to see which choices had been made back then. I wanted to put the ‘blue dots’, the works that had once been deemed ‘less important’, center stage. It turned out that not all of the sub-collections had been ranked according to this dot system; only the painting collection had been done. They’d started, but hadn’t finished, classifying the sculpture and drawing collections. In those days, applied art, photography, graphic design and industrial design were evidently seen as less important. Autonomous, non-reproducible art was given pride of place.”
Jozef Israëls, Na de storm, 1858. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
It’s almost surreal to think that some of these pieces, works by renowned 19th-century artists like Jozef Israëls and Thérèse Schwartze, were once tucked under the label of “less important.” And right beside them, lesser-known names like José Maria Rodriguez-Acosta and Marie de Roode-Heijermans, who are only now stepping into the spotlight. Even Nola Hatterman, so celebrated today, was handed a blue dot at the time. Hatterman, a flamboyant painter from a well-to-do white colonial family, was considered something of a rebel. Her preferred models were overseas migrants, mainly Afro-Surinamese individuals. Through her work, she championed a Black beauty ideal and made it her life’s mission to fight racism and support young Surinamese students in Amsterdam as they searched for their own, often-suppressed cultural identity.
Nola Hatterman, Louis Richard Drenthe / On the Terrace, 1930, oil on canvas. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
The portrait featured in this exhibition is believed to depict Jimmy van der Lak (also known as Jimmy Lucky) who was a boxer, stage performer, waiter, and one of the earliest Surinamese immigrants in the Netherlands. Smartly dressed, relaxing on a terrace with a cold beer and an open newspaper, he was what you might call a quintessential “Amsterdammer.” The painting was originally commissioned by Amstel Beer, but was ultimately rejected (presumably because of the subject's skin colour) and slipped into the blue-dot category. But no longer. Today, it hangs proudly on the wall. As Rein Wolfs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, puts it:
“If the exhibition tells us anything, it is how the vision of a collection can change over time. For several years, Op het terras, (On the Terrace), a portrait of Louis Drenthe by Nola Hatterman, has been one of the key works in the Stedelijk’s permanent collection. Last year, it was even featured in the groundbreaking exhibition about The Harlem Renaissance at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Stories about art are rewritten and reinterpreted all the time.”
Willem Martens, Rêve d'amour, circa 1892-1895. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
The exhibition also highlights broader tendencies in art between 1951 and 1965, which were the years when the dot system was in place. Roughly 10% of the works, mostly (floral) still lifes, landscapes, and cityscapes, were given a blue dot. These classifications reveal the Stedelijk's former modernist leanings, when abstraction and expressionism were considered far more significant. And honestly, it makes complete sense in context, during the Cold War, abstraction was a cultural weapon. Abstract Expressionism became a symbol of free culture prevailing over totalitarianism, rooted in the notion of the artist’s absolute freedom.
Marie de Roode-Heijermans, Het slachtoffer van de ellende, 1896. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Now, 75 years later, Blue Dots invites us to reflect on what we consider important. How do we decide who and what gets placed first? And what kind of legacy do we hope to leave behind? It feels especially relevant now, in a time of looming conflict that the Stedelijk would choose to mirror this earlier era of geopolitical rivalry. Blue Dots is set to open its doors on November 29th and will run until March 15th, 2026 giving you plenty of time to pay a visit!
