Centraal Museum is the oldest municipal museum in the Netherlands. It’s a world-class museum that is strongly rooted in the city of Utrecht. The museum’s mission is to enrich the public through art and culture. This mission guides everything we do. Our rich collection of visual arts, design, fashion and city history always forms the starting point for our exhibitions and activities. The collection enables us to present visitors with new perspectives that are often relevant to present-day developments. To help fulfil our mission, we have identified a number of core values.
Connecting, committed and accessible
Our museum is a place to meet for everyone, irrespective of background, colour, social class, gender, education level, sexual preference and/or physical impairments. This is how we contribute to a more inclusive society. We work with long-term partners such as local residents, the municipal authority, donors and artists to create a diverse museum in terms of organisation, exhibitions and public programmes.
We also wish to make the museum more accessible for visitors who might be less inclined to visit a museum, because of physical impairments or for other reasons. For example, we organise special programmes for elderly people with dementia, or for people with a visual impairment. For visitors living on a tight budget we offer free access, with initiatives such as U-pas. And in instances where language forms an obstacle, we are developing language meetups.
Ambitious, knowledgeable and enriching
From exhibition design to our loan pieces, and from our partnerships to communication: we wish to stand out in all respects.
The Centraal Museum team is highly skilled in acquiring and preserving the collections and in presenting and telling stories about visual arts, design, city history and fashion. To do so we can also draw on the expertise of professional partners with whom we frequently collaborate. Their perspectives provide us with new knowledge and insights, and allow us to offer visitors further information about (the context of) our collection.
Thanks to this knowledge, we can elaborate multiple perspectives in the stories we present. This stimulates visitors to think further and triggers one’s power of imagination. This way we not only address the visitor’s mind, but also reach out to touch the heart.
Read more about the museum’s core duties in the Articles of Association.