Linda Roodenburg

After teaching Dutch at the Rijnlands for seven years, I ended up in the art world. From then on I made exhibitions and wrote accompanying books about contemporary photography. Wonderful productions with well-sounding names, generously subsidized, highly praised within our own fields, but my mother didn’t like them much. And friends who were not part of that art world would rarely mention them. So I resigned from my employer, the Dutch Photo Institute and I started on my own. Now I wanted to create material that concerned everyone. And it had to be about something specific. The increasing aggression against foreigners in my own multicolored, multicultural and beloved city of Rotterdam was the reason for writing the Rotterdam Cookbook. It wasn’t a real cookbook, but rather a cheerful book about the backgrounds and eating habits of thirteen families from different cultures in Rotterdam. The book has by now sold nearly 30,000 copies.
Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden was one of my most important clients for many years and currently I am working on an exhibition and a book for Teylers Museum in Haarlem. Still, these are tough times for art and culture in the Netherlands. Institutions have run out of money for external projects, forcing freelancers like myself to push their boundaries. It’s a real challenge, as they say. For a year now I have been the director of a new, internationally oriented museum that I founded myself. It is completely adapted to the requirements of our time: without personnel costs or fixed costs and independent of government subsidies; accessible to everyone, everywhere, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. I hope to see you all soon at www.foodmuseum.nl

Linda Roodenburg, April 2013