Our site visit today was for the Amsterdam Street Art Museum. Going into this site visit, I did not really know what to expect because the title of the museum sounds oxymoronic—how can you have a museum about street art? When we made it there and the tour guide explained where the collection was, it made a lot more sense. Graffiti and street art—to me at least—has always seemed to be about going against the grain and how impermanent things can be. Graffiti tags on walls can be covered up in a matter of days but people still do it anyways. The form has evolved from the simple tagging up of a neighborhood to claim a type of “ownership” to genre defying pieces of art from the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and powerful political statements such as those of Banksy. I have always loved the impermanence of street art
I found the museum's goal to attract more people to the outer areas of Amsterdam to be admirable, but they do seem to fall a little flat in practice. While many of the pieces they had in their collection were very well done and quite beautiful to say the least, I found much of the situation they were in to be somewhat problematic. Even if they were not intending for this, it sure looks like the reason that they can have so many of the street artists do art around the neighborhood is because the place is home to many lower income households, making it cheaper to approve spaces for public murals, so it seems like they are taking advantage of the situation to further their own agenda. However, I do not know whether that is a good or bad thing because their goals has good intentions behind it, but since I am just a tourist, I am not fully aware of every aspect of the situation they have at hand. Dispersing tourist throughout the entirety of Amsterdam may alleviate many of the problems that they face now in the city center, but they outer rings of the city may not want tourists walking about their communities—but I do not know the general sentiment. Looking at this as an outsider, there seems to be too many variables at play to give a definitive answer on whether or not the museum is hurting or helping the community—in the short and long term.
The collection itself is quite amazing, the museum did not want to skimp on hiring talented artists to build its collection. When the tour guide was asked how the museum was trying to preserve these pieces, his response pointed to the museum not having the resources to and/or not trying to preserve these pieces. I found that to be fascinating because that is so far removed from the mass conservation efforts a traditional art museum to keep all their masterpieces as pristine as possible. That point of view resonates so well with the very core of street art—it was never supposed to last forever—now at the museum, many of the pieces are only going to last for five years. That is what I love about street art and the Street Art Museum, the impermanence of it all is so beautiful and striking for me. While the museum is by no means perfect, I can respect what they believe in.