Cabinet of Stories: Change the World, Not Us

Next to the cabinet is a QR code. Scan it and you get the Gay Tourist Map Amsterdam handed out at the city's first Pride in 1996: bars, meeting places and other LGBTIQ+ addresses, digitised from the museum's map collection. The museum's question is which of them you still recognise, and which have gone.

Het Verhalenkabinet is a small room, one the museum counts among its most beautiful, where a few objects from the stores get the spotlight every few months. This World Pride edition has three, one each from the archaeology, book history and theatre collections, all about gender beyond man and woman. The one the museum singles out is a bone make-up tube from around 600 BC, linked to the goddess Ishtar, in whose temples many people worked who would now be called non-binary.

Three objects make a short stop, so pair it with The Art of Transformation, the museum's crossdressing show, on until 11 April 2027. The cabinet is included in the regular museum ticket.