'At the end I thought, now we can start.'

In March 2014, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam hosted the international academic conference “Collecting Geographies: Global Programming and Museums of Modern Art.” The conference was organized in collaboration with the international partners ASCA/ACGS at the University of Amsterdam, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Folkwang Museum Essen, and the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam. Its aim was to take a closer look at new inquiries into the relationships between art institutions, globalization, and postcolonial discourse, including a critical assessment of the deployed terminology and those strategies that focus on local affinities within a larger art historical and global framework. An overwhelming number of more than 140 scholars, museum professionals, curators, and artists responded to the open call for papers, which urged a critical rethinking of many assumptions in the practice of collecting and exhibiting of so-called non-Western art, as well as the very categories of art and its institutionalizations. Eighty-one papers were selected for the conference. Eight papers are highlighted in this first issue of Stedelijk Studies.

Whether we conceive of exhibitions as narratological spaces with grammar and syntax,[1] or as intellectual working spaces,[2] the fact is that our understanding of exhibitions has shifted from static, temporary constellations of art objects gathered in a dedicated space, to performative sites where the art objects become agents, interacting among themselves, with their audiences, and with the various discursive contexts that are implicitly or explicitly present or presented. Furthermore, exhibitions are increasingly understood as sites for knowledge production, for research, and as having their own discursive agency. They are not merely the outcome of a curatorial research done by a dedicated expert, but in and of themselves sites where various modes of research and various modes of thinking are enacted. Much like we can think about, with, and through art, we can think about, with, and through exhibitions. In tandem with this new understanding of exhibitions, or rather of its ontological potential, the idea of the curatorial as a new epistemological paradigm is rapidly taking hold.

Present are Beatrix Ruf (Artistic Director, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), Bart van der Heide (Chief Curator, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), Bart Rutten (at the time of the roundtable Head of Collections, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, currently director of the Centraal Museum in Utrecht ), and Margriet Schavemaker (curator and Manager Education, Interpretation, and Publications, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). Moderated by Fieke Konijn and Rachel Esner, editors of this issue of Stedelijk Studies. Transcript and edits by Christel Vesters. This roundtable discussion was organized in December 2016 on the occasion of the current edition of Stedelijk Studies, which centers on the theme of Curating the Collection. Increasingly, museums, both nationally and internationally, are formulating new ways of engaging with their collections and showing them. Currently, with plans to rehang its own renowned collection and introduce an ongoing, research-based program that will critically reflect on and continuously (re)contextualize the artworks and themes it represents, the Stedelijk Museum provides an interesting case study in relation to the topics discussed in this issue. While reading this transcript, it is important to keep in mind that the conversation reflects discussions that took place early in the re-installation process.