Sarah Vos’s insightful documentary White Balls on Walls opens as if it’s going to be a straightforward profile of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Exterior shots of the building reveal its striking architecture, the phrase “Meet the Icons of Modern Art” adorning its front windows. Shots of the artworks inside are intercut with photographs of white men, presumably the artists who made these “icons.” But Vos is playing coy, as the film that follows isn’t a reverent ode to these indelible works of fine art, but a merciless and hilarious interrogation of who decides which works of art end up in the museum’s gallery and why.
Vos was granted access to meetings between Rein Wolfs, director of the Stedelijk Museum, and his staff amid the institution’s efforts to become more inclusive and diverse in their collections and exhibitions. Thanks in part to her music cues and sharp editing, Vos creates a nearly mockumentary effect that neither fully lampoons nor endorses contemporary standards for the art world’s political correctness but lands at a decidedly more ambivalent point.
The minutiae of language is the focus of the conferences featured throughout White Balls on Walls. Amsterdam’s deputy mayor, who’s responsible for arts and culture, Touria Meliani informs Wolfs at one point that, in order to secure structural funding, the museum must prove that it can relate to all the people in the city. This prompts a string of analytic talk with Wolfs and his entirely white staff, who debate how they will meet these standards. With quotas? What exactly, they ask, is meant by the designation “person of color,” and are these persons ones with colonial ties? They say they want at least 50% of their collection to represent artists with a non-Western European or North American origin, but they aren’t sure if “origin” or “background” is the preferred term. They’re all juggling numerous, intricate questions at once.
They’re also concerned with matters of gender, as only 4% of the museum’s collection is by female artists. Vos lingers on these conversations with intense interest, signaling her amusement at the staff’s discussions by cutting for emphasis on the questionable suggestions for ways to achieve representation. By the time Wolfs states on the gallery floor that “there are zero works out here by artists of color,” it’s such a surprising admission that one might anticipate this is all a put-on, and a Christopher Guest-style takedown of the art world is underway.
But these are, in fact, real people in real situations, and if there are any performances or exaggerations being made for the benefit of the making of White Balls on Walls, no such indication is made. In an immediate effort to diversify their staff, the museum hires Dr. Charl Landvreugd, a Black man, as Head of Research & Curatorial Practice. When asked, in a talking-head-style interview, about his experience so far, he smiles and says, “Everybody’s very friendly.” Vos also affords Landvreugd ample space outside of the conference room to explain both the changes that he’s aiming for and the significance of his own work as an artist.
But the vagueness of Landvreugd’s initial response is his most incisive contribution to the film, as it underlies much of the tension inherent to the staff’s discussions. For one, it’s increasingly evident that the white museum staff aren’t comfortable challenging Landvreugd’s ideas and other artists of color past a certain point of confrontation, even though no one explicitly articulates that dynamic as such. Reaction shots speak volumes of possible thought or meaning, with Vos keenly cutting to close-ups of the white staff’s faces to reveal uncertainty about these new directions, and perhaps even resentment that it’s being imposed in the first place.
There isn’t a moment throughout White Balls on Walls where the politics of representation, diversity, and micromanaging language isn’t on its mind. This includes an absurd discussion of whether the word “prostitute” should be removed from an art work and replaced with “sex worker.” In one particularly notable moment, Charles Reijnier, the museum’s senior security guard, explains how all the bathrooms are now “transgender,” when what the man obviously means is “gender neutral.” Such a simple mistake is precisely in keeping with the documentary’s thematic focus on how the specificity of expression creates meaning.
If White Balls on Walls is any indication, intensive forms of brand and image maintenance are being carried out in the boardrooms of the art world with severity and a smile. But Vos indicates through the film’s structure that these meetings might not tell the complete story about how some staffers really feel about such matters. Whatever is happening in conversations behind closed doors, White Balls on Walls suggests, might not be so cordial.
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