What does a contemporary form such as video art have to say to the classic forms of seventeenth-century Dutch painting? Bart Rutten asked such questions and more in his recent exhibition Double Act by pairing Dutch masters with selected works of video art. Here he discusses his curatorial principles and how he found formal, political, and thematic correspondences amongst artists separated by three centuries.

Bart Rutten has been artistic director of Centraal Museum since May 2017. Under his leadership, the museum has manifested itself more emphatically as a place for contemporary art, programming many exhibitions in which works from different disciplines and time periods enter into dialogue with one another. Before his appointment in Utrecht, he was head of collections and curator at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; SM’s ’s-Hertogenbosch; and MonteVideo, the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam.