Crap Shoot. An exhibition curated by five young curatorial students from de Appel, which opened 15 years ago this April.
It was the Dutch art world’s cause célèbre of the year. Perhaps the decade? The ticket booth smashed to pieces. Rudy Fuchs, the then director of the Stedelijk Museum, followed by a hapless private detective. The contents of the office, as well as the exhibition of Paul de Reus, stolen from Bloom Gallery. An exhibition almost universally panned at the time.
The day after the opening, the artists and curators held what was meant to be a panel discussion. In the end it was closer to a public lynching. The crowd jeered and heckled. The panel responded, or at least tried to.
Before the dust had a chance to settle, I was asked to interview Saskia Bos for the Crap Shooter, the newspaper that accompanied the show. It was Bos who indirectly started the whole fuss when she created De Appel’s Curatorial Training Programme two years before.
This was to be her chance to respond to the critics, and she took it.
Download a copy of it here.
