Rein Wolfs (b. Hoorn, The Netherlands, 1960) has been the director of the renowned Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam since 2019 and has been instrumental in developing a global collection at the venerable art institution. The art industry veteran visited New Delhi, India, to participate in the 16th edition of the India Art Fair, which ran from February 6 – 9, 2025. Wolfs was one of the speakers at the DNA of Cultural Institutions talk, which explored methodologies to build inclusive exhibition programming within art institutions. He discussed Stedelijk Museum’s efforts and further elaborated on these in a conversation with STIR’s curatorial director, Samta Nadeem, prior to visiting India Art Fair 2025.

We were always a very Western museum…long before I came there, the museum began to think broader…we said we want to invest 50 per cent of the yearly acquisition budget for works by non-western artists, and we succeeded in doing that. – Rein Wolfs, director, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Before heading the museum of modern and contemporary art and design, Wolfs had an illustrious career in the art world stretching over 30 years. He has led the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Germany as director (2013 – 2019); served as the artistic director of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2008 – 2013); the director of exhibitions at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (2002 – 2007) and curated the Dutch entry to the Venice Biennale in 2003.

To set the context for Wolfs’ work at Stedelijk Museum, Dutch filmmaker Sarah Vos documented the activities of the institution since Wolfs assumed stewardship, resulting in her film White Balls on Walls (2022). An interview conducted by Kami Spangenberg, the founder of the film critique website Classic Couple Academy, reveals that Wolfs made it clear that “his focus was to detangle the white male perspective in the art collection and within his team”. In keeping with a diversity directive issued by city hall, the director and his team assessed that the institution had nearly 100,000 works by white male artists in its collection, with a four per cent representation of women artists. Furthermore, there were no works by artists of colour on display in the museum at the time.

Jumping to 2025, the museum features several women artists and artists of colour in its exhibition programming. Stedelijk will show a large exhibition of works by Norwegian new media artist Sandra Mujinga, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and creates works examining the contemporary realities of Black people. They are also presenting works by Esiri Erheriene-Essi, a British artist based in Amsterdam whose parents are Nigerian. Her mixed media painting work often explores the lives of Black families. Wolfs tells Nadeem, “We changed quite a lot over the five years…we changed the whole collection display. We changed the way we are acquiring (and) I think we are more on the global track in terms of acquiring.” He continues, saying, “We were always a very Western museum…long before I came there, the museum began to think broader…we said we want to invest 50 per cent of the yearly acquisition budget for works by non-western artists, and we succeeded in doing that.”

Since Wolfs assumed Stedelijk Museum’s directorship, the institution has also held exhibitions exploring the role of the Netherlands in colonialism, such as Surinamese School: Painting from Paramaribo to Amsterdam (December 12, 2020 – July 21, 2021). The exhibition was held in celebration of the South American nation’s 45th independent year and brought together 100 works by 35 artists, such as Armand Baag (1941 – 2001), who painted colourful compositions depicting everyday life in Suriname. There are also Jules Chin A Foeng (1944 –1983) and Rihana Jamaludin (b. 1959), the former of which created nationalist works and founded the nation’s first institution of arts and social sciences. Meanwhile, the latter taught intercultural communication in addition to her role as a visual artist and became a writer in 2000. Surinamese School looked at the nation’s difficult history with Dutch colonial rule, highlighting the challenges in developing Surinamese contemporary art.

Stedelijk Museum has also presented work delving into the colonial histories of other European nations. One such noteworthy show was Kirchner and Nolde: Expressionism. Colonialism (September 4 – December 5, 2021), realised with the generous support of the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne. The exhibition was co-produced by the Statens Museum for Kunst, the National Gallery of Denmark and the Brücke-Museum, Berlin. Kirchner and Nolde presented works by the expressionist painters Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880 – 1938) of Germany and German-Danish Emil Nolde (1867 – 1956). The artists—given a place of prominence in the museum’s collection—produced art during the imperial German Empire (1871 – 1918) based on their encounters with non-European people, cultures and objects. The exhibition prompted audiences to rethink Kirchner and Nolde’s work by highlighting their exoticisation of the subjects they portrayed, along with the power imbalance that typified their relationships with colonised people.

Wolfs believes that when large institutions such as Stedelijk Museum develop their collections and programming radically, it creates ripples within the art world, eventually leading to systemic change.