Bert Natter
Writer (winner of the 2026 Libris Literature Prize)
When I showed a friend the grounds of the care facility where our youngest daughter will eventually live, my friend wondered aloud: ‘Can you live here if you’re normal, too?’
I understood the wistfulness underlying his question: there’s something appealing about a seemingly carefree life as part of a friendly community in a forest. Unlike in the ‘normal’ world, no one here walks around hunched over their phone. People greet one another. Hunger and war seem not to exist, and everyone can be themselves. It is only on the other side of the fence that a disability is seen as a problem.
We have come a long way as a society since we chained up and imprisoned these two ‘raving madmen’ and put them on display at the Dolhuys asylum. Was it not the chains themselves that made the men ‘insane’?
The chains are less tight now, but we still place a fence around certain people.
Aysegül Karaca
Actor, film and theatre maker and inclusion curator, and ambassador for the Bartiméus Fund
This powerful sculpture by Xaveri represents these men’s struggle with either their bodies or their minds. This form of representation is very common and often very direct, yet I rarely hear about artists with disabilities. For me, theatres and museums are places of freedom, where stories are allowed to exist without preconditions.
Why do we see the talent in one person, while in another we first see the disability? True inclusion arises not from pity, but through encounter. The more we see diverse people and perspectives, the less our differences define us. I make art not with my eyes, but with my heart. That is why I advocate for an arts landscape in which artists with disabilities are a natural part of the main programme, rather than being left on the sidelines. It is not the disability that deserves attention, but the person. This is the power of art.
Frits Scholten
Senior Curator of Sculpture and professor at the University of Amsterdam
Pieter Xaveri was 23 years old when, in 1670, he enrolled as a student of mathematics at the Leiden Academy (or university). Three years later, he died. Whether Pieter ever attended lectures in Leiden during those final years of his life is doubtful; he had trained as a sculptor in Antwerp and it is more likely that he enrolled in Leiden solely to enjoy the privileges granted to students, such as exemption from excise duty on alcoholic drinks.
He supported himself by making finely modelled, amusing terracotta figurines, which found eager buyers among Leiden’s elite. Xaveri favoured characters from the margins of society, such as beggars, street musicians, jesters, or ‘fools’ such as this group of Two Raving Madmen . The seated figure is probably manic, while the reclining figure suffers from a maddening melancholy. Xaveri incorporated the contrast between the two mental disorders into the composition, with one figure positioned vertically and the other horizontally.
