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De Pont Director Maria Schnyder On Why Financial Independence Is a Museum’s Greatest Asset

"Rita McBride once described De Pont Museum as 'an artist's dream'—and that is exactly what we strive for. It does not always make the museum the easiest place for visitors, but it does make it a unique space to experience an artist's practice in its undiluted form."

In April, the De Pont Museum in the Netherlands announced that Maria Schnyder would serve as its new director. The De Pont is a celebrated Dutch museum showing contemporary art, located in a former woolen mill in Tilburg. The museum’s collection is built around living artists, with the emphasis on the quality of the work over any other criteria. Schnyder joined De Pont in 2013 and spent the last four years as deputy director, which means she’s taking over an institution whose daily rhythms she already knows intimately. Observer recently caught up with her to discuss her new role and the unique challenges of governing an institution with such a strong artist-first ethos.

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Your predecessor, Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen, arrived with decades of outside experience at the Stedelijk and the ICA—a more typical external-hire trajectory. What advantages do you see in rising from within rather than coming from outside?

I worked very closely with Martijn, and I have been deeply invested in and fully supportive of the direction in which the museum has been evolving. I can ensure continuity as a matter of course—which is essential in the case of De Pont Museum and its long-term relationships with artists—while also having a clear and critical understanding of where its untapped potential lies and how, with a small but decisive organization, we can take it to the next level.

De Pont Museum has 7,000 square meters of exhibition space, yet the entire organization amounts to only 18 full-time employees. This demands synchronization and alignment: it must operate as a well-oiled machine in order to consistently realize exhibitions of international scale and ambition.

In announcing your appointment, board chair Taco Dibbits framed De Pont’s artist-first commitment as especially urgent “in an era in which societal and audience-driven agendas are increasingly setting the tone in........

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