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The selection of Pierre de Sciullo for the house style of the new Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has caused quite a stir in the world of design, and not only amongst the rejected competitors. Nina Støttrup Larsen examines this surprising choice. It is never nice to be rejected and when it happens, one naturally asks: Why? What happened? What went wrong? One falls into meticulously speculating on the build-up and asking for advice. At some point, one might feel the need to confront the situation in order to get answers, or at least to try to talk about the situation.How can a museum in the process of undergoing major changes deal with its own identity? This has been a question for me while following the developments of Stedelijk Museum over the course of the last six years. During this period, I was particularly drawn to its visual identity, created by the Dutch designers Experimental Jetset. The graphic design they conceived for the museum’s transitional location was a playful combination of previous graphics of the Stedelijk and those of the Post Office, employing the typeface Univers and characteristic diagonal lines, referring to the inside of postal envelopes and emphasizing a ‘sketch-phase’. I had rarely seen this kind of engagement with the actual practice of an institution, where the identity highlighted a museum undergoing development while simultaneously providing the ‘brand value’ of a strong and recognizable logo. In fact, the Stedelijk is widely known for a tradition of developing close relationships and dialogues on equal terms with graphic designers, and it seems to be exactly this policy that has led to a continuous production of innovative and precise designs. In the past, its directors have been closely linked to designers: Willem Sandberg even was a designer himself, Edy de Wilde worked with Wim Crouwel, Wim Beeren with Anthon Beeke, and Rudy Fuchs with Walter Nikkels. In the current visual landscape, where our experience of art is increasingly mediated by design, the importance of such mediation grows. So, how can a museum in the process of major changes deal with its visual as well as its visionary identity? This leads me to the current case of the Stedelijk. Obviously, the museum is in a difficult position, with its original building under renovation and its activities spread out over different locations in the city. Even so, the current director, despite the fact that he will be succeeded once the museum finally reopens, has already ordered a new graphic identity for the institution on the basis of a competitive pitch. An external jury chose the proposal by Pierre di Sciullo as the winner. Here, much can be talked about in terms of that design as compared to the other proposals. Aside from the intrinsic qualities of the competing projects, however, what causes speculation is the very timing and process by which the winning design was selected. Can a director who is about to leave play a central role in commissioning and choosing a new identity for his successor to work with? Since the jury and the head of the workgroup were external and the museum’s own design curators were not involved, the constellation of the collaboration can be an uncertain one, with no substantial base inside the museum. Di Sciullo’s proposal was chosen partly because it was ‘open for change’, but what is the use of openness when the design nevertheless is supposed to be developed and finalised before the new director is in place? It is easy to assume that this openness is being utilised by the marketing department, which has already rejected the typeface designed by Di Sciullo as being ‘too French’. The designers of Experimental Jetset chose to step out of their collaboration with the Stedelijk one year after they got the commission, partly because they felt they lacked the support of the director and the mandate to design. They, too, had been commissioned prior to the appointment of the director with whom they had to work, and even though their design was precise, the collaboration was too fragile to succeed. The current situation is comparable. It will soon be evident whether Di Sciullo is an expensive transitory figure only waiting to be rejected when the new director is finally in place. Designers are creating one identity after the other upon request, but as long as the vision of the commissioner is uncertain, designers will be working in the void, ‘waiting for Godot’. In this case, the rejected can turn out to be both the designers in the pitch and the Stedelijk itself. Is all of this a product of the state of chaos in which the Stedelijk currently finds itself? And if so, how can this be turned around? What should be rejected is the frantic demand for a visual identity regardless of content. As a spearhead for graphic design, the Stedelijk should take up the discussion of visual identity in the cultural field in their own practice – not as a panel discussion, but directly implemented in their own visual identity. How about if the Stedelijk reopens without a graphic identity? How about if the house style develops visually and conceptually over the course of time, simultaneously with the museum, the new director and the new vision? Now that would be an interesting design!Nina Støttrup Larsen is a graphic designer, based in Maastricht/Amsterdam.