Dear guests of the Rietveld Graduation Show 2020, Dead Darlings collectors, and all you soon-to-be-collectors,  

  

We have exciting news!   

This year during the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Graduation Show 2020 you have a chance to bid for graduates’ artworks online!    

Dead Darlings in collaboration with the Student Support Group and the Academy, has invited all graduating students and teaching staff to present us with a “dead darling”, a unique artwork that has been reluctantly discarded during the artistic process.  

  

This is your chance to spot the talent early on!   

Begin or add to your art collection with these diamonds in the rough;  

  

Graduating students and teachers alike have placed their artworks up for auction in the service of their community.  

It’s a fundraiser: profits go to Berlage Fund to help students in financial need. 

 

Participants are all listed, but names are revealed only after the final sale!  

 Can you tell who is who?  

  

Check it out HERE and place your bid. 

All works start with zero euros until you change that!  

 

Be greedy and generous at the same time: avail yourself of a unique artwork, and help out those who need it. 

Go to auction.rietveldacademie.nl

 

Additional information

Who is the student support group?

The student support group was formed in 2019, based on the “Quality agreements”, with the aim of strengthening the position of the individual student in their personal well-being and their resilience as a precondition to productively engage with their education. We understand that due to the current circumstances, (international) students are in a precarious situation more than ever, especially regarding their financial status. We therefore wanted to create a reliable financial structure in which shows care and support for each other while your artworks also get the opportunity to be exposed to a broader public.

Who are Dead Darlings?

The very first Dead Darlings auction was launched in 2005 at the heels of a Rietveld Academy End Exam while standing at the brink of the infamous black hole...A group of graduating students, looking for a way to salvage essential and beautiful works that did not survive the scrutiny or fit the rigorous parameters of the final show, decided to create an opportunity to get together and urge people to offer up those ‘dead darlings’ for a show of their own; a kind of B-side of the exam show. These works can reveal a process and tell a story, with the charm of the underdog, treated less preciously by the makers, and in the spirit of inclusivity, offered up at low starting prices making art affordable to more members of our community.

What is a dead darling?

This refers to a work that an artist has created, yet for any variety of reasons, has not brought to light. The name Dead Darlings was inspired by the phrase “kill your darlings”, something that we were so often advised to do in art school and is an integral part of the artistic process.

What is the Berlage Fund?

The Berlagefonds is the school fund of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. It supports students when they really need it. With this fund, the Academie finances extra endeavours and special investments and expenses that are not or only partly subsidised by the government. By finding ways to increase the contributions to the fund, the Academie is striving to increase the support that it can give to students.

Would you like to financially contribute to students at the Academie without taking part in the auction? Donations to the Berlagefonds are particularly welcome. You can transfer your contribution to: IBAN NL76 INGB 0656 9109 76, in the name of Berlagefonds, Amsterdam.