ALMA

In early 2011 Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is set to launch alma.boijmans.nl, a website that pairs utensils with paintings and prints in which they are depicted.

ALMA (Afbeelding Linkt Met Artefact – Picture links with artefact) couples utensils from the pre-industrial period (1400-1900) with depictions of the same objects in paintings and prints from the era in question. Making this connection provides the museum, as well as the public and researchers, with information about aspects such as the use of the utensils or their significance in a painting. The documentation system was established in 1989 by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s then curator of applied arts, Alma Ruempol. More than 2,500 objects, 1,500 prints and 300 paintings are currently being digitised, described anew and rendered accessible via alma.boijmans.nl.

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen holds and presents the largest collection of utensils from the pre-industrial era in the Netherlands. This includes the extensive Van Beuningen-de Vriese collection, which was donated to the museum in 1990. This collection is unique because it contains utensils for everyday use that were rarely preserved; they were usually discarded if something went wrong with them or if better pots and pans became available. Because the collection includes later forms of mass-market goods, museum visitors can trace the development of utensils from the Middle Ages, via the Industrial Revolution, through to the cutting-edge design of today.

Alma.boijmans.nl was made possible thanks to a contribution from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Cultural Affairs and Science, which granted a subsidy in the context of the ‘Digitaliseren met beleid’ (Policy-led digitisation) scheme. Its implementation is in the hands of SenterNovem, an agency of the Ministry of Economic Affairs that promotes sustainable economic growth by building bridges between private and public sectors, nationally as well as internationally.