“In the Rijksmuseum” has become one of the most popular art podcasts in the Netherlands. It is the result of years of consistent investment in audio content that people actually want to listen to.
Big Orange has produced the series from the very beginning. What started as a single podcast series has grown into a full-fledged audio platform: more than ten series, hundreds of episodes, audio tours, online experiences, and international speakers such as Stephen Fry and Helena Bonham Carter. Below, you can read about how something like this grows and what benefits it brings to a museum.
It all started at the Rijksmuseum
The idea was simple: give visitors a way to hear the stories behind the paintings. The series started under the name *In het Rijks* and is now called *In het Rijksmuseum*. It was all about audio: curators, experts, and artists talked about the artworks and their creators. The episodes tied in with the exhibitions, serving as a preview for those planning to visit and as a reminder for those who had just returned home.
The format worked because it did something a gallery text cannot: it provided space. Space for a story that could last twenty minutes. Space for context, for nuance, for the person behind the work. Season 2 was hosted by Janine Abbring, who interviewed various guests about 17th-century artworks. The series continued to grow, episode after episode.
Series, formats, and voices: the breadth of the collaboration
Each new exhibition brought a new audio production. *Kunstluister* became an atmospheric seven-part series featuring stories, poetry, soundscapes, and music, created in collaboration with screenwriters and actors. *Raymann’s Favorites* invited Jörgen Raymann to discuss colonial history, looted art, and traditions over the course of six episodes, speaking candidly and at times sharply.
For the Vermeer exhibition, we produced two podcast episodes on Vermeer’s life and work, a special audio tour for visually impaired visitors in collaboration with Vincent Bijlo, and a digital online experience lasting over an hour, narrated by Joy Delima in Dutch and Stephen Fry in English.
For “At Home in the 17th Century,” we produced an audio tour narrated by Bracha van Doesburgh and Daan Schuurmans, a podcast episode of “In the Rijksmuseum” hosted by Janine Abbring, and an online experience centered on Petronella Oortman’s dollhouse, narrated by Monic Hendrickx and Helena Bonham Carter. Recorded in our studios in both Amsterdam and Utrecht.
How all those formats come together as a single museum
With so many different series, voices, and formats, the challenge is maintaining consistency. An audio tour for visually impaired visitors and a podcast with Jörgen Raymann are completely different productions. Yet both must feel like the Rijksmuseum.
For each project, we composed music based on a consistent thematic foundation. From this, we created the intro music for the podcast, the narration for the audio tour, and the atmospheric layers for the online experience. We applied the same approach to language, rhythm, and sound consistently, without drawing undue attention to it.
Visitors may not realize it consciously, but they sense that it’s right. And that sense is what an institution builds up over the years, season after season.
What this means for the museum
A podcast for a cultural institution works differently than a marketing campaign with an end date. You’re making a long-term investment in your relationship with your audience.
Listeners who have heard two episodes before their visit walk into the museum with a different perspective. They recognize names. They’ve already formed an impression. They’re curious in a way that a press release never can. After the visit, the podcast remains available. People listen again, share episodes, and come back.
Those listener numbers are impressive, but they’re mainly the result of consistently producing stories that people love to hear, in formats that suit the station, and with a sound that’s consistent and recognizable.
“When it comes to audio tours or podcasts, Big Orange is always the first place I call. They are a valuable partner, both in developing the concept and in the audio production.” Frederique Van Reij, producer at the Rijksmuseum
Does this only work for large museums?
The scale of the Rijksmuseum is exceptional, but its approach is not.
Every museum, big or small, has stories that people want to hear. Stories that are too long for a sign, too rich for a brochure, too personal for a press release. Audio gives those stories a voice. And a visitor who spends twenty minutes listening to your museum walks in with a different perspective than someone who enters with no prior knowledge.
It starts with a question: what do you want a visitor to know, feel, or remember once they step outside? Once that’s clear, the rest will fall into place, right down to the decision of whether to hire a big name like Stephen Fry.
Would you like to learn how audio can benefit your organization? Please contact us or schedule an introductory meeting.
Jos Jansen is the founder and Creative Audio Director of Big Orange. He studied music technology, plays guitar on Spanish beaches during his vacations, and organizes annual sing-alongs for a few hundred people at a time. He writes about podcasts, audio, and the effects of sound on people.