Today we said goodbye to Carry van Lakerveld, one of the driving forces of the new Amsterdam Historical Museum, which opened in 1975 in the former Burgerweeshuis. From 1974 to 1994 she worked as a curator at the museum and from 1989 also as deputy director. Partly thanks to her, the museum became a pioneering, transversal and progressive city museum. We remember her with testimonials from two people with whom she worked closely. Jeroen de Vries, designer of many (photo) exhibitions for the museum, and Peter-Paul de Baar, former editor-in-chief of Ons Amsterdam.
Carry van Lakerveld All rights reserved
Carry van Lakerveld was a giantess. Her significance in the museum world was enormous. Carry was a pioneer, a museum revolutionary. She made exhibitions like Poor in the Golden Age and exhibitions on migration and homosexuality long before others did. As deputy director of the Amsterdam Historical Museum, Carry did not shy away from other controversial subjects such as the February strike and the fight once morest Apartheid.
She was not only pioneering in her choice of subjects. She was also always looking for new forms and techniques to tell a story spatially. And also to add layers and nuances to it.
She experimented in gallery De Tor. She ran it together with Maurits Herben. And on a much larger scale, she did so in the museum. When she felt she might no longer fulfill her role in the museum, she resigned recklessly. She continued as a freelancer, making exhibitions and writing books.
Carry, you introduced me to the museum world forty years ago. You were also a sweet and caring friend. I already miss your voice. We are all going to miss your passionate voice in our world. (Jeroen de Vries)
Employees of the Amsterdam Historical Museum, 1981 Carry is second from the right
Young at heart
Carry van Lakerveld is no more. She died on Tuesday December 7, aged 83. Much older than I would have estimated. In fact, I always saw her as a – albeit somewhat more experienced – contemporary. Because she was always young at heart.
In my opinion, Carry was the soul of the Amsterdam Historical Museum (nowadays called Amsterdam Museum) from the 1970s to the 1990s. Trained as an art historian, she belonged – with Dedalo Carasso, Michiel Jonker, Lodewijk Wagenaar and Renée Kistemaker, among others – to the team that designed the new accommodation of this museum in the former Burgerweeshuis in the Kalverstraat, opened in October 1975. It was the successor to the AHM in the Waag on the Nieuwmarkt, opened in 1926. That was a rather small, boring, static historical annex of the Stedelijk Museum; a collection of documents and artifacts without much mutual connection. The new museum was radically different. It told a story. And that was a completely different story from the traditional one: with a much greater focus on socio-economic history, and therefore also the life of ‘ordinary Amsterdammers’. And also much more exciting, due to the striking placement of atmospheric, significant objects, whether or not of great art-historical importance.
Social engagement
Entirely in the spirit of the time (the curious epithet ‘politically correct’ had not yet been invented), social criticism was suddenly far from taboo in the story told. This already started at the old location with the exhibition ‘Rich and poor in the Golden Age’. The social commitment had touched Carry firmly, and her slightly more mature colleagues were happy to give her the space to do so, because it was successful. And to a large extent reflected their own ideals, although they themselves did not bring up that much militancy.
That’s how I got to know Carry. Through the UvA Science Shop and the International Institute of Social History, she managed to get in touch with left-leaning UvA history students. To which I also belonged. And so in 1979 I co-curated the exhibition ’90 Years of Struggle’, regarding the history of the Industriebond NVV. It typifies Carry that she mightn’t wait 10 years for the centenary… For me it was a crash course in compact writing! (Which I’m happy to ignore this time.)
Ten years later, our intense contact was resumed. She asked me to apply for the position of editor-in-chief of Ons Amsterdam, because the AHM was then in charge of content. And sure enough, I was accepted. In the new OA structure, Carry became the first chairman of OA’s Editorial Advisory Committee in 1989-1990. In the meantime she had become deputy director of the AHM, and since 1989 also acting director, until 1992. Under her leadership there were controversial exhibitions regarding immigrants and regarding gays/lesbos in Amsterdam: very daring themes at the time. In the meantime she also managed the avant-garde gallery De Tor in the Czaar Peterstraat with Maurits Herben! After she left the museum in 1994, she wrote important public books regarding the persecution of Jews and Roma/Sintis in World War II. In any case, to my satisfaction, she has left a strong mark on the history of the Amsterdam Museum! (Peter Paul de Baar)
First pile for the new public entrance on Nieuwezijds May 1986. (Carry in the middle with arms folded)
Exhibition Poor and Rich with a wax figure of a beggar, 1974
