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Authentic experience can reveal itself in the field of tension between art and society. If I had to formulate a creed for my practice as curator, it would more or less be this. Although I do not attach much meaning to patently political art, I do see myself as a ‘politically motivated’ curator. In my opinion, the two separate entities of politics and art best encounter one another in the half-concealed domain between metaphors, aesthetics and opinions. Recently, I had a discussion on the Facebook internet platform about the complex relationship between art and politics. Artist Julie Becker wrote me that she had asked God for advice and had received the answer that art currently found itself in a coma. ‘He said I have a responsibility to wake that shit up and so do you.’ This spurred me to act. It is, I thought, indeed our responsibility to shake art into alertness and remind it of its urgency. In the Dutch art world, the exhibition circuit, expressed in somewhat caricatured form – exceptions excluded –, has long been on a downward-spiralling curve of tension, subject to far-reaching (respectable) populism, international solo policy and an often comfortable, design-camouflaged lack of content. Viewed from outside our national borders, it seems that very little urgency even exists for real involvement in the Dutch art scene. This might soon change for the better when the Netherland’s preeminent international museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, reports back to the front lines. A high-profile exhibition policy with clear positions and choices could put Amsterdam and the Netherlands back on the map. However, the possibilities for creating a distinct profile are unfortunately restricted by the overly broad task description imposed on (overly) large museums. When I left the Netherlands nearly two years ago, I expressed my concern in an interview in De Volkskrant newspaper about the lack of specialized museums for contemporary art. While the tradition of encyclopaedic institutions is one to be proud of, applying an intrinsic, substantive profile to such Molochs is extremely awkward. Even when a museum is not encyclopaedic, but ‘only’ needs to unite modern and contemporary art in its collection and exhibition policies, it becomes difficult to be urgent. ‘Modern’ and ‘contemporary’ are in fact two different entities, with different criteria. One has already been hauled through the historicizing mill and has largely been stripped of its tension and risk, while the other self-consciously and with some ignorance denies the existence of that same historicizing mill, especially ever since the time horizon has disappeared more and more into the background in the now bygone days of booming markets. It seems to me eminently important for the future of contemporary Dutch art that there be an up-to-date ‘watershed’ between old, modern and contemporary. All three need their own museums, with their own specialists, their own financial and procedural structures, their own spatial and climatological conditions, and their own communications, education and networks – and their own audiences. Only then can a meaningful discourse develop within the institutions, can they really focus and tap into the right networks, on an international level as well, and ‘compete’ with the appropriate partners. Then there is the art. Julie Becker says that art is in a coma. I do not know if I agree with her. If she means that art worldwide has little left to say, I find it an important reason to vigorously shake her out of her slumber. But what exactly is the state of the social relevance of art? In the neo-modernist age, a new formalism has gained significance in the form of a revaluation and reinterpretation of the modernist heritage. Happily, it seems that this enrichment of modernism has social, historic and political implications. This became clear at the much-criticized but interesting 2008 Berlin Biennial, albeit that the implications there seemed in fact primarily of an historic nature. Neo, post, reinterpretation and re-enrichment…. Without my unconditionally believing in Robert Hughes’ Shock of the New, all this looking back and rearranging gradually makes one grow impatient and a bit somnolent. As a thing in itself, the new can no longer be a soul-saving criterion. What I am sooner in search of is something that I would like to refer to as new universalism, new existentialism or new humanism, or in short, a contemporary condition humaine in art. Art is, I think, at its strongest and most urgent when the great stories are drawn upon and universal values are thematized, when hidden social agendas are revealed through visual and metaphorical means and complex experiences wordlessly communicated in authentic and truthful fashion. Within the specialized context of a museum or Kunsthalle for contemporary art, the real contemporary human condition can be revealed in a fruitful discourse. Rein Wolfs is artistic director of the Fridericianum Kunsthalle in Kassel. Last year he made solo-exhibitions with amongst others Meschac Gaba, Latifa Echakch, Daniel Knorr, Klara Lidén, Marc Bijl, Cyprien Gaillard, Pawel Althamer and Micol Assaël.