Dutch Art & Design Today

About Dutch Art & Design Today

Art and design, from the Netherlands. 'Dutch Art & Design Today' is a podcast hosted by John Bezold, which explores these two worlds and those working within them. From publishers and artists, to designers and curators, painters and podcasters; this podcast takes listeners behind the scenes of their work, to find out why Dutch art and design is so highly regarded across cultures, and time.

Publisher

John Bezold

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

14 Apr 2022

Latest episode

31 May 2026

Latest episodes

25 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   31 May 2026

   Elles Middeljans

   'When I have an idea for a next drawing, I only draw for that drawing. But never in the weekend do I think, “I’m bored, let’s draw.” I never do that. And the reason why, I found out, is that drawing is also consuming of all my concentration. It’s real work. Every little detail has to be on it. I love that, because without the details, my drawings could be somewhere else. But they’re not somewhere else; they’re of Amsterdam.' —Elles Middeljans For the 24th episode of Dutch Art & Design Today, I spoke with Elles Middeljans, an Amsterdam-based artist, whose work is focussed on drawings made from life in the city. In her, often large scale, line drawings, she captures urban life in a way that creates worlds within worlds. We recorded this conversation in person in her studio at the NDSM wharf in Amsterdam-Noord, a former shipyard turned creative enclave, where we were surrounded by books, plants, drawings, prints, postcards, poster tubes, and much more. Born in Brabant and trained at the Design Academy Eindhoven during the days of Li Edelkoort’s tenure as director, defined by its extreme conceptual-orientation toward design; after graduating she moved to Milan, to intern in the studio of designer Alessandro Mendini. From there, she found her way to Frame Magazine, which is also where she and I first met. After leaving Frame, Elles chose to establish herself as a full time artist in Amsterdam; the story of how she did that is fascinating. In this hour and a half long talk, we unpack that story, tracing her youth, studies, time in Italy, and what Amsterdam offers her in relation to her work. At one moment during the end of her time at Frame, she realized that drawing could be both a profession and a form of freedom. Elles draws from life, sitting outside with a foldable chair, beginning with one small detail, and allowing the image to be built line by line. From black-and-white outlines, to saturated color images—influenced by Johannes Itten and Japanese color systems—Elles’s practice turns close looking into an act of joy. We discuss her collaborations with institutions, as the Rijksmuseum and EYE Museum, and conclude with her exhibition Kleurrijk Amsterdam on the Jodenbreestraat—which saw about 30 of her drawing exhibited last autumn and winter, placing the city on display within itself. From sidewalks to terraces, tulips and passerby; she meticulously creates worlds, both real and imaginary. All on a sheet of paper. You can learn more about Elles and her work over at ⁠her website, (https://www.elles.nl/about/) as well as over on ⁠Instagram⁠ (https://www.instagram.com/elles.nl/). You can find John on X ⁠@johnbezold⁠ (https://twitter.com/JohnBezold) and at his website ⁠johnbezold.com⁠ (https://JohnBezold.com). 'Dutch Art & Design Today' is published by ⁠Semicolon-Press⁠ (https://semicolon-press.com/). ISSN: 3050-6662

2. 

   30 Apr 2026

   Oana Stan

   ‘I like these kind of large topics that tell us a lot about the history of our discipline; about the history of taste; about the history of art history, basically. Part of what I want to highlight with my research, is that we have a certain perception of how a pictorial tradition—as Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens—ended up disfavored at a certain point in history, or apparently fell out of favor... Frans Hals never fell out of favor. ' —Oana Stan For this episode of Dutch Art & Design Today, I sat down with Oana Stan, a Haarlem-based art historian, researcher, and cultural writer whose work focuses on early modern art, the changing nature of taste, women artists, museum history, and for instance, the reception of Frans Hals. Oana first studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest, where her interest in aesthetics led her toward art history. She then completed her BA in Art History at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, specializing in Renaissance art and writing on Venetian painting, before moving to the Netherlands to complete a master’s in Renaissance Studies at Utrecht University. Her research brings together classic looking, institutional history, collection practices, Dutch and Flemish art, and the public communication of art history across countries, languages, museums, and cities. Alongside her research, Oana also founded Women of Haarlem; a public-history walking-tour project that presents Haarlem through the lives of women who shaped the city, In this episode, Oana and I discuss how she first came to art through drawing, books, philosophy, and Renaissance painting, and how Dutch art gradually entered her field of vision through museum collections, study, and relocation to the Netherlands. We talk about her encounter with Rachel Ruysch at the National Museum of Art of Romania, the differences between Romanian and Dutch art-historical training, and her master’s research on women artists in museum collections, including display, acquisition policy, directorship, feminism, diversity, and institutional change. We then turn to her work at the RKD — Netherlands Institute for Art History, including the online Frans Hals study based on Claus Grimm’s decades of research, her work on provenance and database records, and her continuing interest in painted copies after Hals’s genre scenes. Together, these projects show how art history can move from the archives out into public life: through catalogues, collections, cities, and the steady recovery of overlooked visual histories. You can learn more about Oana and her work over at Women of Haarlem (https://www.womenofhaarlem.nl/), as well as over on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/oanandrastan/). You can find John on X @johnbezold (https://twitter.com/JohnBezold) and at his website johnbezold.com (https://JohnBezold.com). 'Dutch Art & Design Today' is published by Semicolon-Press (https://semicolon-press.com/). ISSN: 3050-6662

3. 

   31 Oct 2025

   Lorna Mills

   'I generally take a shortcut and say my work is appalling and formal. That’s the easiest way. Because it’s such a hard question to answer, and you can describe materials, you can describe format, you can describe your output—but it doesn’t really say anything about what the work does. And I don’t want to be that concise.' —Lorna Mills For the 22nd episode of Dutch Art & Design Today, I sat down with Lorna Mills, a Toronto-based artist whose digital artworks—often created from hundreds of hand-edited frames—are at once formal, frenetic, and unmistakably hers. Raised in Saskatchewan, she entered art through books and built a private museum in her imagination, guided at first by the World Book Encyclopedia and its arsenal of images. She later moved to Toronto to study painting, entering the art world through color, gesture, and pigment before moving into video, lenticular prints, and eventually digital media. Her early experiments with GIFs, both sourced and self-recorded, gave way to a meticulous visual language defined by animated collage, jagged edges, and looped visual rhythms that reframe how we see the internet—and ourselves—through a pictorial lens. In this episode, Lorna and I discuss how her work emerged from formal training and evolved through the unruly spaces of early net art, artist-run spaces, and eventually blockchain platforms. We talk about her labor-intensive process—such as cutting individual frames by hand—and the way her animations interact with scale, whether installed across Times Square or released as intimate, square-format works on Tezos. Lorna also reflects on being part of the Art & the Blockchain exhibition at Upstream Gallery in Amsterdam back in 2022; where I first came across her work installed in a space, in person; as well as for instance her long collaboration with Transfer, and how she approaches pricing and accessibility across physical and digital markets. We speak about her sustained interest in pictorial composition, her refusal of minimalism, and her embrace of the internet’s raw, unfiltered abundance. Her work is as deeply informed by the history of painting as it is by the visual delirium of contemporary online culture—and in this conversation, that full spectrum comes through. Read the essay (https://mirror.xyz/misterbezold.eth/qhb4yCZ7YUDmDcuZQ-TTULvc0LVibfGX8XxMguRyrz0) 'The Digital Phantasmagoria of Lorna Mills'. You can find Lorna on X ⁠@lm_netwebs (https://x.com/lm_netwebs) and at her website ⁠LornaMillsImageDump (http://www.digitalmediatree.com/sallymckay/LornaMillsImageDump/). You can find John on X ⁠@johnbezold⁠ (https://twitter.com/JohnBezold) and at his website ⁠johnbezold.com⁠ (https://JohnBezold.com). 'Dutch Art & Design Today' is published by ⁠Semicolon-Press⁠ (https://semicolon-press.com/). ISSN: 3050-6662

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 29 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

34

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

60

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.