Access Granted? Breaking Into and Breaking Down the Art World

Together with Young Collectors Circle, SPUI25 in Spe delves into the systemic and personal challenges that arise for cultural professionals who are about to enter the field. This program identifies critical issues and proposes actionable solutions for cultural practitioners aiming to navigate and reshape the art world. Together with several guest speakers from the cultural field, we focus on addressing current barriers and ways to overcome them. What are the ways in which we can nurture a creative ecosystem where individual and collective voices can thrive and feel welcomed?

The evening will include a brief masterclass on the inner workings of the art world and how you can secure your spot right at the center of it. Together, we will imagine an art world that breaks boundaries, fosters dialogue, and welcomes all to create, experience, and belong.

Young Collectors Circle is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the art world through facilitating meaningful connections between artist, art lover and potential collectors.

About the speakers 

Nadine van den Bosch is the director and co-founder of Young Collectors Circle, a non-profit community-based platform, dedicated to supporting the arts. In addition, she works as a freelance curator, advises various (international) corporate collections, and oversees projects in which artists are commissioned to create works for the (semi-)public space. She is also the co-author of Het Grote Kunstkoopboek, published last year by TERRA, and regularly writes articles and columns for art and lifestyle magazines about trends in the contemporary art world and the role of collectors. Furthermore, she gives guest lectures on the art world and art market at art academies and universities. Nadine holds a master’s degree in Art History from the University of Amsterdam. 

Sepp Eckenhaussen is an arts researcher and organizer. His work focuses on visual art, digital culture, activism, tactical media, and new economies. He currently works at the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam University of Applied Science) and Caradt (St.Joost Academy of Art & Design, Avans University of Applied Science), where he runs the research program Our Creative Reset and co-hosts the podcast Art in Permacrisis. From 2020 until 2023, Sepp and Koen Bartijn directed Platform BK.

Leia Amerding is an art curator, producer, and moderator. Originally from Liberia and Togo, her work focuses on Visual Culture, Race Theory, and the Contemporary Art Market across the African continent.

Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History, University of Amsterdam. She recently directed the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture. Until 2014 she was Professor of Iconology in Belfast, where she led a Research Graduate School. She researched her PhD as a Zurich James Joyce Foundation Scholar and defended it in Cologne. She held an Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship at University College Dublin.Her research focuses on social art practices, art(istic) research, word and image studies, visual legacies of (Irish) writers, performance art, the historiography of art, and curation.

Yin Aiwen is an artist, designer, researcher, and occasional institutional strategist. Departing from the idea that “the technological is institutional, the institutional is technological”, Yin reconsiders and reimagines the socio-economic, cultural, emotional, and bodily conditions, etc. by designing the new techno-institutional around care ethics. Her major projects include ReUnion Network, Liquid Dependencies (with Yiren Zhao and Zoe Zhao), and Alchemy of Commons (with Yiren Zhao). Notable writings include On Post-Temporariness (Making&Breaking, 2020), On Platform Design (so-far, 2021), Utopia in Progress: on the Social Relevances of the Arts in the 21st Century (LEAP, 2023).