Apparently, I had a huge grin on my face when I walked into the Rijks restaurant in Amsterdam. Or so I was told by Taco Dibbits, the general director of the Rijksmuseum, who was waiting for me with chef Joris Bijdendijk.
And he knew why: I had just been round the museum’s Frans Hals exhibition. It seems the great Dutch painter has that effect, and the vibrant, bustling atmosphere of the busy museum was an added delight.
“What’s the difference between Rembrandt, Vermeer and Frans Hals?” Dibbits asks, rhetorically, almost the minute we sit down. “Rembrandt for me is all about the human condition, he’s introspective, very emotional. Vermeer, it’s that perfect moment of happiness, tranquillity, everything in its right place. With Frans Hals it’s the vivaciousness and the joy and the movement.”
Hence the grin-factor, and the great Dutch masters explained. I feel as if I can go home right now. Job done.
The exhibition emphasises Hals’ astonishingly modern, almost impressionistic technique — although now much admired, it was also one reason why he once fell out of favour. “Yes, the revolutionary side, those colour patches, you understand why in the 19th century Hals was said to be a drunkard and someone who lived the good life and didn’t care too much,” Dibbits continues, in his perfect English.
So when we agree on the restaurant’s special four-course Frans Hals menu, inspired by the show, I have a brief vision of landing up as rotund as “The Laughing Cavalier”, chortling over frothy tankards. But no — I can see that the spare figure sitting in front of me is probably an eat-to-live person, and Rijks’s Michelin star promises something much more refined.
The potato-stick nibbles go untouched, and the freshly made butter (with caramelised seeds and chilli oil) which accompanies the sourdough doesn’t merit so much as a glance from Dibbits. Instead, he talks passionately and eloquently about art, and especially about his mission at the museum.
The restaurant is tucked in beside the Rijksmuseum, with an airy, contemporary feel following a makeover in 2023, and we’re sitting beside a large window looking up and out on to the Museumplein. An amuse-bouche arrives in front of us — a tiny cup of emerald green bouillon. Dibbits’ flow doesn’t miss a beat, but I ease a question in sideways, about his own start.
Now 55, he was born in Amsterdam to a Quaker father and a cheerfully atheist mother. Although he says his initial focus, at school, was mathematics, an interest first in photography and then in drawings took over. In 1992 came his first taste of working at the Rijksmuseum — as an intern, studying drawings. “I love drawings, they are so direct. The first contact of the artist and his subject. I’ve always been interested in how things are made.”
A trip to Italy as a teenager, to look at “gold grounds” — early religious paintings — was an eye-opener; he went on to study art history in Amsterdam and Cambridge. In 1997 he moved to London to work at Christie’s: that was, he says, “amazing. You learn so much, you learn very quickly what you don’t know — because what you don’t know can have financial consequences” — he laughs — “and you learn to distinguish quality.”
A stint at the Getty Museum, in Los Angeles, just as it was moving into a new building and rethinking its displays, proved highly relevant for what was to come next — a return to the Rijksmuseum, as curator of 17th-century art, just as the great institution was closing its doors for what turned out to be a very extended period of renovation.
“Everyone said, ‘You’re crazy, it’s closing, why would you go and work there?’” But Dibbits saw it as an opportunity. “With the entire building closed, we were able to rethink the whole way of presenting works.”
When the museum finally reopened, after almost a decade, Dibbits had moved up the ranks. The directorship of the Rijksmuseum is certainly one of the most prestigious cultural positions in the western world, and there was no programme: he had carte blanche.
“Everyone was asking what I was going to do. It’s hard to imagine now, it’s only 10 years ago, but the big discussions then were: can you have sculpture next to painting?” And, importantly — since the Rijksmuseum is unusual among national art institutions in that it is also the country’s national history museum — “Can you have historical objects next to works of art?” Such questions would no longer need asking: museums have come a long way, and the Amsterdam giant was at the forefront of the changes.
“I felt I could use my international training to show how Dutch art could be displayed in a world context — though of course that’s relative, in a country as small as this one.
“I also wanted to play an active role in putting things on the agenda that are important now for the history of the country.”
So, skipping lightly over the Rijksmuseum’s greatest recent triumph, last year’s Vermeer exhibition, which drew more than 650,000 people from all over the world, he is eager to talk about two other, more controversial shows.
“After I became general director, in 2016, I immediately thought we should do a show on slavery, since it was a big part of Dutch history, and also an exhibition on the independence of Indonesia [1945-49]. Both provoked a lot of emotions. There was much controversy, but I thought they were subjects we should tackle.”
We’ve been talking for 20 minutes and the staff have still not brought our first course, probably because we haven’t yet touched our amuse-bouches. Tactfully, they slide in front of us plates as beautiful as miniature paintings: a delicate sandwiching of cured herring, oca tuber and grapefruit with dill — Dutch ingredients that are this chef’s speciality. I hear Frans Hals distantly murmuring approval.
But there’s no let-up in our conversation, and talk of the Netherlands’ colonial past inevitably brings up the question of restitution, a hot topic for every museum.
“Like many people,” Dibbits says. “I used to think of restitution as a solution — politically, certainly. If you just give something back, then that’s done with, finished. But now I think it’s only the beginning. Part of a process. We’ve had a relationship with some countries for hundreds of years, one which was not at all equal — the wrongs that have been done, you can’t disentangle just by saying, ‘OK, you get this back.’
“But we try to work within the museum sector: with the national museum in Jakarta, for example, we work together and research together, and decide what should happen to the objects — and try to stay out of the political sphere as long as possible.
“Also with Sri Lanka, which was a relatively short period of [Dutch] colonisation — it was British afterwards — there were objects from the King of Kandy. When we started to talk about it, it became obvious that there was much to learn, on both sides — we could see our collection in a different context. Incredibly fulfilling.”
But it’s not always a pretty story of mutual education and enrichment. The issue of restitution is “often also used internally, in a country, to affirm a national identity, sometimes a nationalist identity. That’s where it goes wrong.”
He believes joint ownership and shared access can work, though, giving the example of one of the Rijksmuseum’s most publicised acquisitions, which was made in partnership with the Louvre in 2015: the magnificent pair of life-sized marriage portraits of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit, by Rembrandt. It became highly political — in both France and the Netherlands, national museums’ holdings are the property of the state — and a huge amount of money was in question: €160mn.
“So a political solution was found,” he says. “At the beginning it was quite difficult [to share ownership and rotate the display of the pictures], but you know the Netherlands is a small country and we’re always looking for alliances. We decided the two pictures should always stay together — the couple have been married for more than 350 years, after all — and it has led to a much closer relationship with the Louvre. I’m going there on Friday to talk about restitution of second world war loot. So you see it creates a bond that is more interesting.”
We really need to get on with our first course — and it is very good, complicated and surprising. As is the next: a bowl of shelled mussels mixed with chicken, in a foamy broth made with Jopenbier, a craft brew from Hals’ home town of Haarlem.
Back to it. Dibbits is not going to be deflected from his passion for his subject by chat about food. And I’m interested in whether the pure art side of the Rijksmuseum’s activities and its role as keeper of the national historical record ever clash.
“During the renovations, there was huge tension — is it history or is it art? My main goal, with the curators, was to establish that the public don’t care — all they want to see is beautiful and authentic objects. The divide has now completely gone.
“And history is always multi-layered, not always beautiful. To try to give that to the public is one of our duties. With our exhibition on slavery, there were no objects, so we included oral history for the first time. It’s as important as archives and art: so if you put the three together, you get closer to the truth. And you get richer history. Methodologically, that show was very important.
“I remember saying to the curators, ‘You have to make these exhibitions as if it’s an art exhibition, so don’t try to explain too much — give facts, and give people the space to fill the rest in.”
He makes a parallel with late Rembrandt (it’s possible that Rembrandt actually lives in his head, I think to myself). Later in his life, the great painter’s highly detailed style became looser, “and our mind fills it in, which makes it even more real”.
Such imaginative responses are very much part of Dibbits’ mission for the museum — which is nothing if not ambitious. He wants “all children” to have the chance to visit, so that they can learn “not to be afraid, and to develop a critical sense. We live in a completely image-driven society, visual literacy is hugely important.”
He has three teenage sons always glued to their phones, and feels the importance of teaching young people to assess the images they are constantly fed.
Our main course arrives, another plate like an artwork. The waitress explains that pork collar is the part between the neck and the shoulder — the wildly extravagant collar ruffs on the Dutch Golden Age portraits spring to my mind, a little disconcertingly. It is, she says, glazed with aubergine with a sauce of calamansi and pistachio, and a pork jus. It is truly delicious.
We’re still talking about history, and what the museum acquires to reflect the moment. The museum tends to keep a gap of “about a generation”, he says — “a contemporary art museum has a different mechanism” — but recent additions to the collection are certainly imaginative: the gun involved in a highly publicised political murder, for example, and a stencil used for the pandemic-era warning signs on public buildings.
Meanwhile, I ask Dibbits what, after eight years as director, and guiding the museum into the buzzing, highly active institution it is, remains as a dream or ambition?
His answer isn’t directly linked to the museum. “My one big dream,” he says, “is to have art on the national curriculum, for children. And for young adults. Even history is no longer on the curriculum. But we have to have that, as human beings. What else can we learn from, what else do we have as reference?”
Among much else, he’d like to do a significant exhibition on the “contested subject” of faith: a driving force in today’s world and an area where, he believes, art can play a part. “Faith is expressed through objects, though Quakers are very bad at that,” he says. “Art can give insight into other faiths and cultures.”
Above all, Dibbits believes that “national museums reflect what a country is. US museums are the triumph of the individual, in France it’s the state, in the Netherlands it’s a group effort. And I’m more and more interested in how national institutions are linked to the history of the country” — both for understanding the past and seeing the way forward.
That seems to lead easily on to the question of the British Museum and its problems. Dibbits was strongly tipped among the front-runners for the directorship of the UK’s troubled national institution, and when we meet the appointment of Nicholas Cullinan has not yet been announced, so I fully expect a “no comment” answer. But instead his reply is superbly diplomatic: “I think it’s an amazing museum, but it’s probably a job for someone who knows the place well, someone from there. The Rijksmuseum is home for me.”
By now, we’ve both passed on Frans Hals’ no doubt wonderful dessert, and ordered mint tea for him and decaf for me. But we’re still on politics. This emphasis on nationhood, and the idea of exploring faith as a topic: both seem especially relevant in the light of the country’s election results in November last year. A strong swerve towards the far-right of Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration, anti-Islamic Freedom party was described in the press as a “Dutch political earthquake” for this famously tolerant nation. As the Rijksmuseum’s financial structure is based on a three-way split between government subsidy, earned income and private sponsors and donors — the typical Dutch “group effort” he mentions — could this change of political complexion spell a newly uncertain climate for cultural institutions?
It’s early days — when we speak, the convoluted coalition had not yet been formed — but Dibbits, who describes himself with a wry smile as “an optimist”, has his own apparently unshakeable faith: “I think art can help. That’s quite idealistic, but I think it’s a function of the museum.”
Idealistic, perhaps, but far from simplistic. Dibbits quotes the politician and diplomat Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a former chair of the trustees, saying of the institution: “You’re not political, but you can’t pretend you’re neutral.”
The important thing, he feels, is to take the risk. A little earlier, he had noticed a tattoo on our waitress’s arm: the single word “osare”.
“Is that Italian?” he’d asked her. “It means ‘to dare’. Dare — that’s my motto.”
Jan Dalley is the FT’s arts editor
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