The long search for a new name for Dutch museum Witte de With has taken a step closer, with two options seemingly in the running.
Back in 2017 the institution announced it would change its name to avoid having a connection with Admiral Witte Corneliszoon de With, a seventeenth century Dutch naval officer who engaged in colonial exploits in Peru, the West Indies and Brazil. Established in 1990, the arts centre itself was named after the street on which it stands.
Three years on, a committee came up with a shortlist of possible new names compiled via online public surveys, in-person forums and staff workshops, alongside consultation with the institutional partners. The arts centre formerly known as Witte de With says more than 200 people participated in this public input phase, whether in person or online.
The shortlist they came up with includes ‘KAT’, ‘with variations to spell the name with the letter C, the letter K, or with both letters at once’, which the committee says is an acronym that works in Dutch and English as alternatively ‘Kunst. Activiteiten. Theorie’ or ‘Contemporary Art and Theory.’
The second option is ‘Kin’, ‘with spelling variations to spell the name in sentence case, uppercase and lowercase’ which the committee explained ‘emphasizes a community-based relation, and that can likewise be used as an acronym, for example, to ‘Kunst International.’’
The final option is ‘Haven’, again with possible variants in case, a word that in Dutch means harbor, referring to Rotterdam as a port city, ‘and in English usage commonly refers to safe space or place of opportunities.’
An external committee met last week to discuss the shortlist, favouring KAT by majority.
The committee featured Jannelieke Aalstein, Leal Arazzi van Herwaarden, Clara Balaguer, Liesbeth Bik, Yahaira Brito Morfe, Willem de Rooij, Sasha Huber, Stijn Kemper, Iris Kensmil, Louise Mitchell, Tumelo Mosaka, Willem Philipsen and Kees Weeda.
The committee were also however given the option to ignore the results of the three-year consultation and come up with their own ideas. They took this opportunity to propose ‘Melly’, the name under which a gallery within the institution has been operating since 2019, which itself was collectively arrived at by members of a youth programme. They had taken inspiration from a permanent artwork by Ken Lum, a billboard, which has been installed on the facade of the building since the inaugural exhibition in 1990. Alongside an image of a woman at a desk, the hoarding proclaims ‘Melly Shum Hates Her Job’.
A vote on preference between Melly and KIM by the advisory committee produced an 8 of 12 majority favouring Melly.
On his website, Lum says of the work: ‘The ways in which people have interacted with Melly Shum Hates Her Job continues to surprise me. Flickr and Facebook pages have been created in honour of Melly Shum and her persona has even been adopted by a Tweeter who regularly tweets about hating his own job. While I may have created Melly Shum Hates Her Job, the public has been activating the work far beyond my initial intentions.’
On 30 September, the Advisory Committee’s Report, as well as the findings of the public-input phase of the renaming process, will be discussed by the institution’s director, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, and its supervisory board with a final decision announced 5 October.
