Studio Notes Podcast - Mick Nieuwenhuis

The third episode of the Studio Notes podcast is here.

Studio Notes: Conversations is a podcast shaped by curiosity. Each episode is a one-to-one conversation with someone whose work or way of seeing the world holds my attention. The guests come from different fields: art, music, neuroscience, architecture, design. The format is simple. Two people, one conversation, no script. I listen more than I lead. Some episodes are in English, others in Dutch. Every conversation comes with written summaries in both languages.

A note on language: this episode is in Dutch. I deliberately choose to speak with each guest in their native language. Mick is Dutch, so we spoke Dutch. For my English-speaking readers: my apologies. You will find a full written summary in English below, and future episodes will alternate between the two languages.

This time I sit down with Mick Nieuwenhuis, founder of Newhouse Gallery in Amsterdam. Mick studied media, spent time in New York, went to the fashion academy in Antwerp, and launched a custom lingerie brand. Then came a burn-out. And then, almost by accident, art. First as an assistant to one artist. Then as an agent for several. Then on the floor of her first art fair, where people were pulling at her sleeve to buy work. Two years later, she opened her own gallery on the Jodenbreestraat.

Newhouse is not a white cube. It is closer to a curated living room, where art, collectible design, and fashion meet. Mick’s team comes from fashion. Her references come from fashion. Her way of building a brand around a gallery comes from fashion. And that difference is what makes Newhouse one of the most talked about young galleries in the Netherlands.

In the episode we talk about:

* From lingerie brand to burn-out to gallery: how curiosity and saying yes shaped her career

* Why her first art fair made everything click, and why others almost made her quit

* The 50/50 commission model, and how she started by doing it differently

* How she turned a booth at Big Art into an immersive world: totem poles, wood chips, red light, and a smoke machine

* A salon de rentrée in her own apartment during Amsterdam Art Week

* The Hubba Bubba Building in Zandvoort: a villa covered in bubblegum balls, listed for sale through the gallery. You buy the artwork. The house comes with it

* What the art world can learn from the fashion industry

* The physical experience of art vs. screens: “A work should never be backlit”

* Where the gallery world is heading: smaller fairs, more intimacy, fewer white walls

* Her dreams: Art Basel, Design Miami, presence in New York and Paris, and her own museum at 65

We also traded work. I gave her a piece, she gave me a sculpture by Camille de Prêtre. It is in the gallery now and it belongs here.

Listen now on Substack, YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Summary (English)

Mick Nieuwenhuis never set out to open a gallery. She studied media, spent time in New York, trained at the fashion academy in Antwerp, and ended up building a custom lingerie brand called Maison Nouvelle. Customers could design their own sets: straps, lace, colours, hooks. The brand grew, moved into retail, and then around 2020 it all became too much. She burned out and walked away from everything she had built.

What happened next was not a career change. It was more like a slow slide into something she did not see coming. She met an artist and started helping out. Other artists noticed and asked for the same thing. Before she knew it, she was representing a handful of mostly female artists and taking them to fairs she had never attended herself. Her first was PAN Amsterdam. People were grabbing her sleeve to buy work. She had no experience and no plan, but something clicked. Not every fair that followed confirmed the feeling. Some nearly made her quit. But the momentum was stronger than the doubt, and in September 2024, she opened Newhouse Gallery on the Jodenbreestraat in Amsterdam.

This conversation was recorded in my studio, and what struck me from the beginning is how differently Mick thinks about what a gallery can be. Newhouse is not a white cube. She calls it a curated living room. Paintings hang next to collectible design objects, vintage furniture sits alongside fashion pieces, and glass handbags by designer Tess van Zalinge are presented as gallery works. Her entire team comes from fashion, not from art, and that background runs through everything: the branding, the way exhibitions are staged, the instinct to think in terms of experience rather than display.

We spent a good part of the conversation on the business side. Mick started by doing things differently from most galleries, rejecting the standard 50/50 commission split in favour of a model where artists covered their own booth costs and she took a smaller percentage. It was closer to an agency than a gallery. Over time she moved toward the traditional structure, not because the old way was wrong, but because she realized she needed creative control over how the work was shown. That shift is telling. It is not really about money. It is about being able to shape the world around the work.

And she takes that literally. At Big Art, she transformed a booth into a forest of totem poles by Santiago Pani. The floor was covered in wood chips, red light hung overhead, and a smoke machine filled the space. The concept drew on Kami, the Japanese belief that spirits inhabit all things. Right next to it, Sandra K. Planken had built an underwater world from textile and glass, with coral reef sounds playing through hidden speakers. These were not booths with art on the walls. They were environments you stepped into, places that changed the way you looked at what was inside them.

Another story that stayed with me was the Hubba Bubba Building in Zandvoort: a villa that street artist Frankey covered entirely in pink bubblegum balls, a giant figure blowing them from the chimney. Mick listed it for sale through the gallery. The concept is simple: you buy the artwork, the house comes with it.

Accessibility came up repeatedly. Mick’s starting price is 590 euros. She told me about a seventeen-year-old girl who saved up for months and came to a fair specifically to buy one piece. That image stayed with me longer than any gallery statement I have ever read. When people walk in and say they do not know anything about art, Mick tells them: neither do I. There is no jargon at Newhouse, no velvet rope. During Amsterdam Art Week she hosted a salon de rentrée in her own apartment. Visitors had to email for the address. It ended up busier than most gallery openings. People sat at her kitchen table with wine, and the conversations that followed were nothing like what happens in a white-walled room with track lighting.

We talked about where the gallery world is heading and whether the traditional model still makes sense. Mick does not believe in fixed hours or permanent spaces for the sake of permanence. She believes in momentum: pop-ups, dinners, travelling shows, events that light up and then disappear. She mentioned two guys in New York who park a U-Haul truck outside an art fair and open the back as a gallery. That kind of guerrilla energy is what she thinks the industry needs more of, and I agree. There are too many fairs and most of them follow the same formula. The ones that stand out build an experience. The rest hang work on walls and wait. After four consecutive weekends of fairs, Mick knows this from the inside.

Towards the end we got into the question of physical versus digital. Mick is unequivocal: a work of art should never be backlit. She wants to light it, not screen it. She has a Samsung Frame at home and uses it only for television. When it is off, she puts it behind the couch. She represents photographers like Lotte Ekkel and Nanda Hagenaars, and she always emphasizes that their work is made in camera, without digital manipulation. She is open to AI-generated art in principle, but it has not connected with her yet.

Her ambitions are clear. Art Basel. Design Miami. A presence that moves between Amsterdam, New York, and Paris. And at sixty-five, her own museum. She visited Peggy Guggenheim’s house in Venice and decided on the spot: that is the direction.

At the end of our conversation, we exchanged work. I gave her a piece. She gave me a sculpture by Camille de Prêtre. It sits in the gallery now. It belongs there.