ABSTRACT
In October 2011, the Dutch junior minister of foreign affairs with special responsibility for development cooperation, Ben Knapen, announced that the ministry would cut all funding to the Tropenmuseum by the end of 2012 (Lieshout 2011). After months of negotiations and petitioning by both the museum and the public to reverse this decision, and following a large-scale reorganization during which about half of its staff were made redundant, the government retreated somewhat from its decision and promised further funding with specific conditions. As well as making efficiencies in collections care and management, these conditions required that the Tropenmuseum merge with two other ethnographic museums in the Netherlands, thereby assuring significant savings. Most significantly, however, the reorganization entailed transferring responsibility for the Tropenmuseum from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and the nationalization of its collections, which were previously owned by the Royal Tropical Institute. This represents a decisive moment in the history of the museum, not least in relation to its role in Dutch international development cooperation.
