A Dutch museum invents art on the phone: a service that allows people to call in to talk about art

The forerunner had been the great Gianni Rodari with his celebrated Fables on the Phone: now, on the phone, comesart as well. Accomplice to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, which is forcing museums to find creative solutions to the closure and interruption of physical relationship with the public, a small Dutch museum, the LAM Museum in Lisse, a town of twenty thousand inhabitants near Utrecht, has come up with an “art on the phone” service. It is called Viewphone and is aimed, we read in the project’s presentation, “at anyone in need of a stimulating conversation about art.” Talking to the public are all the employees of the facility: the director, the conservator, the bookshop staff, the cleaning staff. And they talk to anyone every Friday afternoon during the restrictive measures period (which ends April 28 in the Netherlands). Simply make a reservation by sending an email.

“When we’re open,” said director Sietske van Zanten, “we’re used to hearing people say they’ve never talked as much inside a museum as we do. And they are right. We do talk a lot here. But it’s not so important to talk, it’s important to share, because together we see more. And it is through art that we have the most beautiful conversations.” For this reason, the Viewphone project was born.

The project started shortly after the lockdown began in the Netherlands (museums were closed on March 12) and provides a way to activate conversations that always start with a work of art, lasting between five and 10 minutes. The LAM Museum has a contemporary art collection centered mainly on the relationship between art and nature, the museum’s main focus (so much so that the building housing the collection is surrounded by a park, which can also be visited, of course), and is distinguished by its alternative ways of visiting. It is an institution belonging to a foundation, the VandenBroek Foundation, which fully funds the museum’s activities.

A Dutch museum invents art on the phone: a service that allows people to call in to talk about art

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