Foreign ministry stops funding Tropenmuseum

The foreign affairs ministry is to stop subsidising Amsterdam's Tropenmuseum, which offers permanent and temporary exhibitions based on non-western cultures.

The museum currently gets €20m from the ministry's development budget, but will lose the funding from 2013 because of cuts in aid spending.

A museum spokesman said officials are in talks on possible alternative sources of funding, such as the education and culture ministry in an effort to head off the museum's closure.

In his shake-up of the Dutch arts and culture sector, minister Halbe Zijlstra pledged to largely spare national institutions. But he has also said they will have to find at least 17% of their funding from private sources.

sources: DutchNews.nl and Royal Tropical Institute press release