How AI is changing work
Art & heritage
Work that talks back, and collections that open up.
Artists use AI as a material, a partner or a subject. Museums and archives use it to make their collections searchable: handwriting becomes text, images get descriptions. The question of who holds the rights and what you show grows along with it.
What changes
- Handwriting and scans are automatically converted into searchable text.
- Collections get descriptions, keywords and connections that a person then checks.
- Artists work with their own models, datasets and generated images as raw material.
- Funding applications and reporting call for openness about AI use.
Where people make the difference
- The idea, the choices and the meaning of a work.
- Context and interpretation: what an object says, and to whom.
- Handling the rights of creators and sensitive heritage with care.
How AI is already used
The Night Watch complete
The Rijksmuseum taught neural networks Rembrandt's painting technique and used them to reconstruct the parts that had been cut off, based on a historical copy.
RijksmuseumSearching the collection with AI
The Rijksmuseum's Kunstverkenner (Art Explorer) asks visitors questions and, based on their answers, makes suggestions from the online collection.
RijksmuseumPainting after the algorithm
Pixel Pioneers at Depot Boijmans (2026) showed work by Christopher Kulendran Thomas: canvases painted by hand after images generated by algorithms.
BoijmansOld letters made searchable
Het Utrechts Archief used handwriting recognition to convert more than 2,000 pages of letters from the archive of Kasteel Amerongen (Amerongen Castle) into searchable text, and is scaling this up.
Het Utrechts ArchiefEnriching museum collections
In the European project ECHOLOT, KMSKA, M Leuven and Musea Brugge, among others, are testing automatic summaries, descriptions and image recognition for their collections.
meemooMusic from the archive
With WAIVE, artists and the public make new music and images from archive material from Beeld & Geluid (the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision), such as using a nature recording as a rhythm.
Beeld & GeluidBeing open about AI
The Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie (Creative Industries Fund NL) asks applicants to explain whether and how they used AI in their writing.
Stimuleringsfonds
Where the sector is heading
Creators can object to the use of their work for AI training. Pictoright did this collectively for its members and supports Opt Out Now for opting out a whole body of work at once.
PictorightHeritage institutions are working together on open tools to enrich and share collections with AI, including through Europeana and Wikimedia Commons.
meemooFunds ask applicants to be open about AI. Using AI does not count against you in itself; careless mistakes do.
Stimuleringsfonds
What a maker can do for you here
- “Make our archive searchable with handwriting or speech recognition.”
- “Build an installation or work with AI for our exhibition.”
- “Use AI to write draft descriptions for our collection, which our curators review.”
- “Make an interactive tour that answers visitors' questions from our own sources.”
Researched on 5 October 2026. Know a good example from the Netherlands? Let us know.