de Appel’s Curatorial Programme 2026/27 will be focused on the themes de Appel is engaged with in the coming years, namely land, co-ownership and housing, governance, (art) economy and class. These interrelated themes — which de Appel, like many art institutions, deals with internally on a daily basis — are collectivised because we believe they are social and political issues confronting many people in the Netherlands and internationally, in both rural and urban areas. Many artists deal with these issues on an artistic and structural level. We see the need to provide a space for the accumulation of singular conversations, proposals and models that can lead to workable and liveable collective projects. We achieve this through our exhibitions, curatorial, school and neighbourhood programmes, live activations, and de Appel's archive and library.

The Curatorial Programme (CP) was founded by de Appel in 1994. Running for ten months of the year, it has followed more or less the same structure ever since. The selected five to six participants travel together, meeting curators, artists, and art and cultural institutions, gaining first-hand knowledge and building lasting relationships with each other and the ecosystems they encounter. They work closely with mentors who help them reflect on their experiences and organise collective readings and writings. At the end of the ten months, the participants curate a project together. Each year there is usually a thematic focus, which determines who the tutors and mentors are.

We see curating today as a practice that exceeds just exhibition and public programme organising, extending to also involve institutional building and the transition of structures from hierarchical to collective and open. We are interested in affirmative institutional critique and the building of different institutions and structures of governance, leading to the building of a new society.

For the programme, each of the three modules will be guided by a group of tutors, and will include visits to sites and institutions engaged with similar questions.

Governance, or how we work (and live) together, is central to de Appel, as it stems from a larger question of how we live together in society and achieve social justice. We also see this as central to the current debate on diversity. Stefano Harney suggests that public administration inevitably recreates the state and the very sources of power that bureaucrats' efforts at social change are supposed to dismantle. We often see this in art and cultural institutions. At de Appel, we address these issues internally by introducing the team to inclusion workshops in collective thinking and action, and by using the tools of Lumbung (the collective governance strategy used at documenta fifteen). This is a step towards practising what we preach, so that the structural and the thematic merge. Renowned international scholars such as Stefano Harney and David Bollier will be invited to speak on governance and economics to a wider constituency.

Taking a larger historical and artistic perspective, de Appel, with colleagues in Amsterdam and elsewhere, will research and present historical cases of emancipatory movements and forms of organisation and governance that emerged in response to oppression and colonialism. These cases are directly related to Dutch history. Artists are here both practitioners, co-researchers and co-curators. Structurally, these exhibitions are inspired by de Appel’s history of large-scale projects such as the legendary exhibition Words and Works in 1979, which championed solidarity.

The economy, the survival of institutions and their sustainability are focal points for autonomy. Transvestment is the transformation of resources from the capitalist art market to an economy based on commons values. It is redistributing and divesting from capitalist market logic. These issues take shape in live activations and gatherings with artists, curators, economists and funding bodies to collectively explore the questions that arise. They also take shape through experimentation with fundraising initiatives such as artist and designer markets, developed and co-organised by artists.

Land is the main frontier of many struggles, particularly those related to the environmental crisis, land grabbing and affordable housing. In the present context of late capitalism, it is transposed to a commodity. We see political and social movements across the globe fighting for free and fair access to land and its resources. Artists have been spearheading and participating in these struggles, adopting and experimenting with shared ownership and different forms of the commons.