White Balls on Walls

You could attribute it to Trump-shock, to Covid-19, climate crisis, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, or to some confluence of them all, but in the last three or four years arts institutions, academies and taste-makers across Europe and North America have come to recognize their complicity in the white supremacist, sexist, capitalist status quo. Such is the case at the Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s Museum of Modern Art. When Sarah Vos started filming her fly on the wall documentary in 2019, 90% of the museum’s collection was the work of white men. The Stedelijk’s recently appointed director, Rein Wolfs, determines that redressing this imbalance must be his top priority. But how does the quest for greater diversity and representation impact the job of curators? Are the artist’s gender and skin colour criteria for evaluating his/her art? Is the canon canceled? And what will the public make of all this… ?

Voss’s film is a shrewd, ironic, objective temperature gauge on the highly politicized cultural battle over “Woke” values.

White Balls on Walls is everything you hope for. Filmed during a process that inevitably causes discomfort, with flawless intuition and restraint, but unmistakably with a sense of humor. Entertaining, at times funny, insightful and exciting, White Balls on Walls is an important contribution to much-needed institutional change and awareness.

Filmkrant

A compassionate portrait of a complicated process that shows how much the creation of an inclusive art world is human work.

Metropolis M