The Wim Crouwel Lecture is organized annually by the Wim Crouwel Institute at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. A knowledgeable and high-profile individual is invited to address a current theme in the field of design and offer new perspectives on and/or through graphic design. The Wim Crouwel Lecture is co-produced between the Wim Crouwel Instituut, Stedelijk Museum and Allard Pierson, and supported by Pictoright Fonds, Cultuurfonds and the Amsterdam University Fund.
WIM CROUWEL LECTURE #10: FRIDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2025
TIME: 16:00 - 17:15 hrs
LOCATION: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
RSVP (free entrance) mail to: [email protected]
Introducing speaker: Lilet Breddels, Director Archis Foundation
Speaker: Vasyl Cherepanyn, Head of the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv
Organizer/Curator Kyiv Biennial
Staring into the Dark: Visual Culture in Times of War
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has put its people – and Europe as a whole – under direct existential threat. This has forced the West to question the very foundations of the institutional order it had been based on since the end of World War II. Vasyl Cherepanyn, the director of the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv and organizer of the Kyiv Biennial, puts this new catastrophic reality into perspective of today’s political imagination and visual culture. The talk focuses on the modalities of image production and perception in a revolutionary situation and under conditions of war and conflict, as well as explores the connections between symbolic and real violence and their influence on cultural processes, encompassing visual communication. In the current ideological setting, the arts (including design) have to be or to become political anew. This talk traces how visual and political antagonisms have evolved from the perspective of a civically engaged cultural institution.
Vasyl Cherepanyn (Ukraine) is Head of the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), an institution he co-founded in Kyiv in 2008 as a platform for collaboration among academic, artistic, and activist communities. VCRC is the organizer of the Kyiv Biennial and a founding member of the East Europe Biennial Alliance. Cherepanyn holds a PhD in philosophy and has lectured at several universities, both in Kyiv and other cities in Europe, and is a curator, writer, and editor.
PAST EVENTS 2014 - 2024
Wim Crouwel Lecture 9# | 2024 | Amal Alhaag | Lies Ros | The End of Design … as we know it ;)
Report Wim Crouwel Lecture #9 by Astrid Vorstermans
Wim Crouwel Lecture 8# | 2023 | Marian Duff | 'Figure it out!'
Report Wim Crouwel Lecture #8 by Astrid Vorstermans
Wim Crouwel Lezing #5 | 2018 | Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz | 'Constructing Ideas of Dutch Design'
Wim Crouwel Lezing #4 | 2017 | Alice Twemlow | 'Design Criticism in the Age of the Anthropocene'
Wim Crouwel Lezing #3 | 2016 | Huda AbiFares | ‘Multiscript Typography for a Global Citizenship’
Wim Crouwel Lezing #2 | 2015 | Gilian Schrofer
Wim Crouwel Lezing #1 | 2014 | Joost Elffers
Photo credit: Simon Pillaud