Red Tape Relics

Just when we thought that museums have covered ground on just about any theme or period, a museum for redundant policies and contemporary art was juxtaposed. And it couldn’t have been more timely.This innovative idea exposes superfluous, contradictory, and nonsensical laws and regulations.

Country of exhibition: the Netherlands

Venue: city halls and other government buildings

The venue couldn’t have been better. And, as Simeon Djankov states in a recent blog, “It is not all that surprising that businesses consider the government to be a drag on their activity…. After all, the governments make businesses pay taxes and go through all kinds of administrative hoops.”

Exactly the museum’s point! It recognized that a variety of regulations were not efficient to anyone, and decided to publicly demonstrate its flaws. Buro Inaxis, and Program Administrative Burden Reduction for Citizens, both created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, initiated this refreshing project and since 2006 this exhibit has displayed burdensome, non-existing, or just hilariously funny regulations.

Everyone is invited to be involved and voice experiences with unusual, impractical, or plainly irrelevant red tape. One example that is on display in the exhibit:

“The Law on Working Conditions Transportation Sector sets standards on how much time should be spent on labor, driving, and rest. One section defines the fresh water shipping sector in which it specifies ship types and its employees. The origin of this chapter goes back to the Act of Mannheim of 1868. The last time changes were made to this chapter, some parts were surprisingly kept intact. The standards are exclusively for crew members yet not for other employees on board, like kitchen staff. Moreover there is an exception for employees who work on rafts, and those who are charged as lifeguards. The museum tried to trace what was meant by “rafts.” That a raft is not necessarily a pile of logs tied together by drowning people, seems pretty clear. However, it also couldn’t be much bigger than a just rowboat. We don’t think a crew with a fixed time schedule is serving on either of these. Unless life boats were meant, but these were already mentioned in the Exception Section. That no fixed time schedule was assigned to the employees on these boats, has been life saving to many a drowning person. The donors of this museum piece think it is confusing for the shippers to have different rules for staff on the same vessel. The museum considers the Exception Regulation unnecessary.”

Feel like a visit but can’t go overseas? Take a look online. The exhibit is in Dutch only. If you don’t speak the language, enjoy the contemporary art, it congruously expresses the discontent on display.