ABSTRACT
On a very prominent location, right behind the Amsterdam Central Station on the other
side of the IJ River, a new, gleaming iconic building can be seen. The elegantly designed
building houses the Dutch national film museum or the “EYE Film Instituut” (https://www.
eyefilm.nl/). The “EYE Film Instituut” (Figure 1), which opened its doors in April 2012, is
responsible for taking care of some 37,000 old art films, about 700,000 pictures and
numerous books, soundtracks and other film-related items. As such, the “EYE Film Insti-
tuut” serves as the national repository for films and film making in the Netherlands. It is
funded by the Dutch state to the tune of 7,000,000 euros per year and by the Amsterdam
municipality for a much more modest yearly amount of 50,000 euros. Whereas other cul-
tural activities were hard hit by the recent fierce cuts in state subsidies, the “EYE Film
Instituut” came out relatively unscathed. It is expected that the new museum will attract
about 225,000 visitors every year (van Zwol, 2012). Public funding and the sale of
regular tickets alone, however, will not pay all the bills. To balance the budget, the
“EYE Film Instituut” has to include the organization of seminars, educational activities,
parties and a whole array of commercial activities in its business model. The institute,
moreover, also relies on the activities of about a 100 volunteers. The “EYE Film Instituut”
is a vivid example of how cultural institutions in the Netherlands deal with the current
funding climate and how they have to find a way out of the dilemma between, on the
one hand, commercialization and, conceivably, dumbing down, and, on the other hand,
maintaining a more elitist “l’art pour l’art” attitude and thus focusing on a potentially sig-
nificantly smaller group of high-end visitors with a considerable stock of cultural capital.
