Daan van Dartel studied Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University (MA) and Museology (MA) at the Reinwardt Academy in Amsterdam. She has worked at the Tropenmuseum since 2004, (documentalist 2004 – 2009 / senior documentalist 2009 -2014) doing curatorial research on collections for different large permanent and temporary exhibitions. In 2015 she became curator of popular culture and fashion at the NMVW. Her interests lie with the mundane that shapes everyday lives of people, the meaning of clothing in communication, the power of fashion as a language and identity issues. Her museological interests deal with the roles of museums in society, decolonization through fashion, and multivocality.
Currently Daan works on re-fashioning the ethnographic clothing collections. How can the concept of fashion be applied to existing collections and (how) can it inform collecting the new? She is also looking at dress interactions in colonial times.