Galerie Fons Welters Archive

Leading gallery

Particularly in the 1990s, Galerie Fons Welters was a leading force in contemporary art, especially in the fields of sculpture, installation art, and experimental exhibition practices. The gallery was known as a place where artists could push the boundaries of presentation. This occasionally resulted in radical interventions in the exhibition space, such as Job Koelewijn’s The World is My Oyster (1996), in which he used an angle grinder to remove the back wall, creating a view of the neighbours’ garden.

Artists

Over the years, the gallery attracted a large number of artists who went on to gain national and international recognition. Among those represented were Gabriel Lester, Renzo Martens, Sara Sejin Chang, Saskia Noor van Imhoff, Maria Roosen, Aernout Mik, Berend Strik, Jennifer Tee, Viviane Sassen, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Femmy Otten, Job Koelewijn and Joep van Lieshout. The latter designed the distinctive green gallery entrance with arched windows in 1996.

Donation to the RKD

Fons Welters distributed his personal art collection among various institutions, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Centraal Museum, the Bonnefanten Museum, and the Kröller-Müller Museum. More recently, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam presented the exhibitionThings I’ve Never Seen, dedicated to the gallery.

Welters donated the (partly digital) archive, including the library, to the RKD. It offers direct insight into the inner workings of a gallery that long served as a hub within Amsterdam’s art scene. Researchers will find, among other materials, portfolios and artist files, artist books and catalogues, correspondence relating to artworks and practical matters, financial documents, consignment agreements, and administrative records. The archive also contains a wealth of (digital) photographic material, primarily documenting artworks and exhibition installations.

Consulting the archive

Once the archive has been catalogued, it will be accessible to researchers and other interested parties, enabling them to draw new connections between diverse forms of contemporary art and gallery practices. This will contribute to a more complete understanding of the network and the role of Galerie Fons Welters in the development of the art world in the Netherlands since the 1980s. Extensive archival research has already been conducted, for example for the publication Galerie Fons Welters 2025-1985.