White Plays Black: Blackface on the Dutch Stage

Preview: written before the show opened

The Black and White Minstrel sketch shows ran on Dutch television until 1972. Here they sit alongside Henk van der Linden's Sjors en Sjimmie films, Wendy van Dijk's Dushi and Zwarte Piet: white performers in make-up playing Black characters. The museum traces the habit back to the first minstrel shows in the Netherlands in 1847, and further, to the medieval 'Moors' of plays and street entertainment.

Posters, costumes, photographs and film from the Allard Pierson's theatre collection make up most of it, alongside loans from The Black Archives and work by Kara Walker and Brian Elstak. It also covers 'human zoo' exhibitions, and the Black theatre-makers who claimed the Dutch stage from the 1980s, up to the young collective The Need for Legacy. René Wissink's design uses indirect sightlines, so you choose when to look at the offensive images, texts and clips.

The museum states plainly that the show contains racist material, including blackface. The regular museum ticket is €15.50, free with a Museumkaart.