By Tim Groen

David van der Leer initially never pictured himself living in New York –he thought it would be London—but he’s here alright. And now that he is, this Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design is changing the way we look at architecture and design exhibitions. Thanks to David, you can’t even really call them exhibitions anymore, because he is blurring the very definition of that word by creating events that take place outside of museum walls. Events which may not even be about presenting the audience with anything tangible.
“A lot of people around me knew from the get-go that they wanted to end up at a museum,” David says about the people he works with, “So it’s kind of funny that I’m doing this, as I wasn’t trained for a museum job per se.”

After David received his master’s in Art & Cultural Sciences (with a focus on Urban and Architectural Theory) at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, he hung around there for a while, working at 010 Publishers and Rem Koolhaas’ OMA, respectively. A job offer at Steven Holl Architects brought him to New York, and the rest is curatorial history.
“At times I feel like I need to reinvent the wheel, and at other times I think that arriving here without a museum-specific background works to my advantage,” David reflects, “I’m less inclined to think that there’s a proper, singular way to approach projects.”

David, whose interest lies primarily in the general urban context, rather than in architecture and design as isolated principles, is gradually trying to shift the museum’s program to include projects that are about the city in general.
“We don’t have a design or architecture collection, and we’re not about to start one, which makes it possible for us to look at the urban environment with a sense of freedom.”
Along with fellow Assistant Curator Maria Nicanor, David worked on Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward and Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum.
“So far, the emphasis was on big retrospectives. And I’m not saying that that those are a thing of the past; the Wright show had the highest attendance in the history of the museum, so there’s clearly an audience for those.” But the shift that is taking place, offers David, has to do with the current team’s preference for experimentation. “I like intuitive processes,” he says, and continues, “It’s more interesting when you enlist individuals from various principles to work on a project. Not only architects, but designers, artists, thinkers and composers as well. You don’t have to be an architect or a historian to have something interesting to say about how cities work.”

It is exactly in this spirit that David (in collaboration with Maria Nicanor) developed what is possibly his most ambitious project so far in his current capacity: the BMW Guggenheim Lab. For a long-term, international project supported by the car manufacturer, the curators are taking it to the streets. Over the course of six years the lab will conduct research and experiments in nine different cities, where teams of four emerging talents from various disciplines are handed a theme and work with local audiences.
The first two-year theme, Confronting Comfort: The City and You, will be explored in a temporary structure designed by architects Atelier Bow-Wow from Tokyo. The participants in the lab, or “Lab Team Members,” will be selected by an interdisciplinary group of established practitioners from fields ranging from architecture and design, to economics, biology and so on . “The team of established names picks the younger creatives,” clarifies David, who is eager to emphasize that Maria and himself are not involved in picking these young talents. ”It would be kind of boring if it was all up to two curators, so we figured out how to make the process more inclusive and unpredictable.”
David is enthusiastic: “I love this project already. Some people think the Guggenheim usually comes to a city, puts up a big building, and gets people in there to see exhibitions.” With this project, he explains, everything is different; “Now we are observing, developing projects that connect with the existing urban context, and none of it is permanent. It’s an exciting new way for our museum to operate.”
The traveling structures, which will serve as the base for the lab’s activities, will no doubt garner attention in their own right, but in the end it is all about what comes out of the labs. At the end of each two-year period, the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s findings are to be shared with the New York public at the Guggenheim Museum here in the city.
Simultaneous to the BMW Guggenheim Lab, the curator’s team is working on another multi-city project, this one about silence in the city. The Silence project will kick off in New York, and will most likely travel to other cities. “Several cities
have shown interest already.”

I ask David how New York has changed him. Since the city clearly seems to create the context for pretty much everything in his professional life, I figured that it has to affect him personally as well. “I think New York makes you tougher, and more direct,” he answers, “And it makes you work hard. Harder than you’d ever work in the Netherlands, that’s for sure!”
But hard work is fun, he explains, and the line between networking and hanging out with friends is blurry. “It’s healthy when you’re friends with people from all over the world, as you tend to be in New York.” Living here, David says, makes him feel more connected with friends or colleagues in other international hubs like London or Beijing, than with his fellow Dutchmen. My feelings about my motherland change with each passing year, and not—he laughs— necessarily always in favor of The Netherlands. “The most liberating aspect of living in this city is that you can be very ambitious and expand your horizon continuously: it is a great city to grow up in.”