ly, the museum becomes a place of education.24 Van Daalen himself claimed, in
the annual report of 1972, that 'by allowing visitors to pass through and experi
ence a museum visit, a new mentality can arise for the visitor.'25
Although he was involved and highly interested in the developments of con
temporary and conceptual art, he was the big absentee during the Forum manifes
tations that took place in Middelburg, with exception of the first edition of 1977. It
is in any case remarkable that Piet van Daalen was hardly involved in Forum, espe
cially because in 1973 he had dedicated an exhibition to Lawrence Weiner, Marina
Abramovic, Thomas McEvilley en Daniel Buren, artists who all returned to Forum
in the coming decade. A convincing reason may be that Piet van Daalen had already
shifted his attention from contemporary art to other issues, such as Eastern spirit
uality. His changed attitude towards art was expressed when Boezem's art project
Podio del Mondo was enacted, since van Daalen did not share the opinion that art
should be immortal. In addition, when the possibility arose to buy the work Hom
mage aan Brancusi made by Gilberto Zorio in 1983 during the Forum manifestation
Sculpture, Piet van Daalen, who was then a member of the council responsible for
municipal art purchases, voted against the acquisition of the sculpture.26
Podio del Mondo per l'Arte
Marinus Boezem himself was already quite active in the Middelburg artistic net
work when he founded Podio del Mondo per l'Arte on February 6, 1976. This tem
ple-like building, the former grain market, served as a podium were artists could
capture their line of thought, their concepts and their work in the form of a (me
morial) stone. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam preserved the speech that
Boezem performed on the occasion of the opening. In his speech, Boezem ex
plains how artists from all over the world would be invited to design stones with
either a text or image, which would repetitively be added to the Podio. Boezem
explains in this speech that:
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The Art of Remembering Forum: the Local Memory
[the] podium shall eventually take form with 'concepts' in freestone - a flooring
for current art and the future avant garde. The 'Podio del Mondo per l'Arte' will
gain a lasting value in that it shall function as a work of art in its totality.27
24 Bedaux (ed.) et al., Onvoltooid Verleden Tijd, 14-15.
25 Bedaux (ed.) et al., Onvoltooid Verleden Tijd, 8.
26 Maria-Rosa Boezem and Marinus Boezem, interviewed by Nico Out in Onvoltooid Verleden Tijd.
27 Address at the foundation of the Podio del Mondo per l'Arte on February 6, 1976 in Middelburg.
