Drents Museum was established 1854 with the purpose of collecting artifacts from prehistory and antiquity. The museum had a private character during the 19th and beginning of the 20th century but opened its doors to the public in the 1950s. From that moment onwards, the museum has housed a diverse archaeology collection that forms its the permanent exhibition. The combination of archaeology-related permanent exhibitions and temporary exotic exhibitions from other cultures creates a symbiotic unity in which the strong points of each exhibit are highlighted. The respondent that I interviewed was very fond of the success of this strategy.
As far as primary school pupils are concerned, the respondent remarked that the Drents Museum had not received a significant group of pupils between 2006 and 2016. It should be noted, however, that he did not know the actual number of visitors of the archaeological exhibitions. The respondent stated that there is a strong link between the number of schoolchildren that visit the museum and the temporary exhibitions on offer. To illustrate, the archaeological exhibitions of Het Terracotta Leger van China (The Terracotta Army of China) in 2008 and Dode Zeerollen ”(Dead Sea Scrolls) in 2012 were popular amongst school-going children, but complications such as the museum’s renovation in 2011 decreased the number of schools visiting. The permanent archaeological exhibitions contain rooms with prehistory and bog bodies. These bodies were excavated in the province of Drenthe.
The respondent stated that the museum has an active role in approaching school ex- perts for developing education programs. This role is permitted because, according to the respondent, 90 percent of the primary schools in the province of Drenthe lack the mandate for developing an educational program with the Drents Museum, whereas the quality of programs created by the other 10 percent is inadequate. The Drents Museum is involved in an active program in which individual primary school teachers and education organisations cooperate on making new history- and archaeology-related content based on the temporary exhibitions. The decision to feature these exhibitions of the Drents Museum as educational content is curious. The respondent stated that while exotic and international collections are presented in the temporary exhibitions, these always adhere to the four pillars of the museum (Archaeology of Drenthe, Arts and Crafts around 1900, Contemporary art and Native art), Therefore, archaeology-related exhibitions such as Het Terracotta leger van
China (2008), Dode zeerollen (2012) and the Maya’s (2016) are put on display. According to the respondent, these international topics present a challenge for primary schools and are not easy to incorporate into the curriculum. He agreed that in order to remedy this, personal contact with teachers from primary schools in Drenthe is crucial.
Besides the aforementioned program, Drents Museum devised three education programs for primary schools that relate to archaeology and ancient history. The first, Een koffer vol spullen, involves presenting a case with archaeological tools in the classroom. Pupils can sort the tools and, through observation, can form their own opinion about the objects on display. The second program, Mysteries in het Veen, allows pupils to become acquainted with the prehistoric bog bodies that were found during the 19th century by turf cutters. The objective of this program is to let pupils experience the life of a turf cutter in the 19th century. The last program, Prehistorische high-tech, forges a strong relationship between the past and the present. The program seeks to challenge the belief that prehistory is old fashioned and primitive. Instead, prehistory is presented to primary school pupils as a series of technological highlights and advancements.
The Drents Museum has a strong relationship with the Cultuurmenu program of the province of Drenthe. This program allows schools from the province of Drenthe to be involved in regional education programs. Primary schools from Assen have been visiting the museum since it was incorporated into the Cultuurmenu program. Primary schools from surrounding regions, such as Midden Drenthe, the southern part of the province Groningen and the Stellingwerven in Friesland, also frequent the museum. Depending on the subject of the temporary exhibits, in fact, schools from all over the Netherlands visit Drents Museum. For example, the exhibition of the dead sea scrolls was popular among primary schools from the Bible Belt, a region from Overijssel to Zeeland with evangelistic roots and influences.
The vision of this respondent differed from other respondents. He argued that it is necessary to incorporate challenging concepts into education programs in order to achieve an increase of pupils and visitors. Drents Museum, therefore, attracts temporary exhibitions from Russia and China and uses these exhibitions for educational purposes. The collection and education programs are generally based on history education. Archaeology education is represented in two education projects, that generally focus on the historiography of the discipline and its origins in the practice of collecting objects in the Nineteenth and Twentieth century. These projects thus have a stronger link with history education than archaeology education.
To end this section, a study of the numbers of visitors and pupils between 2008 and 2016 entails a fluctuated image where increases and decreases are detected per year (See table 8 and figure 13). In total, a major decrease between 2008 and 2016 is detected. The fluctuating number per year is, as the respondent outlines, corresponds with the temporary exhibition per year. The temporary exhibitions Het Terracottaleger van China (as exposed in 2008 and 2009) and Dode Zeerollen (exposed in 2012 and 2013) contained many visitors. The numbers of pupils that visit the museum could have a relation with the implemented education programs that the respondent has entailed, but this relation however has many more factors to look upon.
Number of visitors Number of pupils under 18 years Number of schoolchildren 2008 350.290 Unknown Unknown 2009 380.000 Unknown Unknown 2010 75.589 1.113 Unknown 2011 40.006 1.113 231 2012 188.468 19.491 5.558 2013 230.589 28.833 8.106 2014 150.087 22.471 1.198 2015 150.514 23.766 1.926
Table 8: The numbers of visitors, pupils and schoolchildren at Drents Museum from 2008 to 2015. (Made by the author, based on annual reports Drents Museum, 2008-2015).
Figure 13: The number of visitors, pupils and schoolchildren, depicted in a graph (Made by the author, based on annual reports Drents Museum, 2008-2015).
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