Tentoonstelling met tekeningen en prenten van Willem Molkenboer, waarschijnlijk in de Rijksnormaalschool voor Teekenonderwijzers 1880 - 1910

Curator: This fascinating photograph from between 1880 and 1910, titled "Exhibition of drawings and prints by Willem Molkenboer, probably in the Rijksnormaalschool voor Teekenonderwijzers," offers a glimpse into an art education setting. Editor: It’s evocative; a bit shadowy. There's an immediate sense of artistic creation and the presentation of nascent ideas. A still life captured of what seems a busy workshop, though rather silent. Curator: The materiality on display here speaks volumes. Look at the makeshift easels, the range of drawings and prints affixed in an ad-hoc display. The photo’s focus becomes the drawings hung; the photo’s quality emphasizes its own method of production rather than those displayed on the boards. The artist clearly shows the labour needed in constructing artworks from design to exhibition. It begs questions about accessibility and how work gets viewed. Editor: I find it equally interesting how those sketches and busts conjure images we’ve seen again and again over centuries of Western art. I see echoes of academic traditions in the plaster casts that crown the walls and the sketches – the ways young artists learned to translate volume, light, and shadow onto paper. The busts carry so much weight with a history of symbolic meaning. Curator: Precisely! Notice how these traditional methods were taught in what could be read as a distinctly modern framework, an early technical school that prepared students for design careers. Editor: Indeed! And even the choice to capture this space with a photograph layers meaning: it shows an institution implicitly invested in visual culture that extended far beyond just academic exercises into technology. What better way than the “snapshot” as it makes claims to freeze or to show its relation to progress. It all forms a network of intertwined artforms as an expression, a history and even an identity. Curator: Considering its placement in the Rijksmuseum today, it invites questions about our relationship to labor in creating artworks. I wonder what discussions about industrial production were being taught inside, if not shown. Editor: Exactly! The photographic lens itself creates a modern visual inheritance through its representation, doesn't it? Seeing this image lets us explore what cultural inheritance of artmaking can look like even now.