Artistic direction

Ron Miltenburg was in 2009 assigned to the World Statues team as the artistic director of World Statues Festival. But before that he was already known to the organisation as a member of the Board of the World Statues Foundation in 2007. In 2008 he was a member and spokesman of the jury for professionals. At the time he wrote in the juryrapport:

“World Statues 2008 shows a remarkable development. Mediterranean and South American influences, just like participation from Anglo-Saxon countries, bring about innovation and expansion of the traditional genres.
“The increasingly richer scale of experiences – between sheer aesthetics and interactive entertainment, and between historical, actual, and fantasized themes – appear to inspire Dutch and North European participants.”

The Province of Gelderland, one of the main sponsors, deemed it well-timed to assign an artistic director who is to take these and other artistic developments ahead.

You can read more about Ron Miltenburg’s vision on World Statues Festival under the heading vision on the left.

Ron Miltenburg initially  co-worked as a theoretician with artists, and published in newspapers as well as in glossies, in strict academic magazines as much as in in crowd publications.
He organized exhibitions at regular and odd locations, and fed TV programs to public access channels in New York and Amsterdam.
In the nineties he mainly focused on his own conceptual art, yet earning his keep by managing an event enterprise.
Now a days he is a free lancer in the fields of writing and curating.

He calls the World Statues Festival his most challenging odd job so far:
“I would never have dared to meddle with so broad an event for the general public (350.000 spectators all in one weekend, mind you!), if it wasn’t for the very apt and versed organizers who dreamed up the concept. Also I was lucky to find lucid sparring partners.”