"The magazine MacGuffin – launched two years ago by Kirsten Algera and Ernst van der Hoeven – has already attracted an international following with thematic issues devoted to the bed, the window, the rope and the sink. While the design world is focussed mainly on the newest trends, the editors of MacGuffin prefer to be surprised by the casual nature of everyday objects. Their fascination with a timeless aesthetic is the key to innovative research. In this respect, the magazine seems to form a bridge between the physical and digital worlds and focuses our senses on those things that usually escape our attention and which occur largely unseen. 

Over the past few months, at the invitation of Het Nieuwe Instituut, the editors of the magazine have been developing an exhibition about the phenomenon of collecting while simultaneously compiling their forthcoming issue: The Cabinet. In Finders Keepers, questions about the value, meaning, influence and specificity of collecting are related exclusively to physical objects, but in many cases the conclusions are also applicable to digital collections.

Finders Keepers aims to reveal the phenomenon of collecting and the activity of the collector before exploring the characteristics of individual collectors or their love of their objects. Furthermore, Finders Keepers employs a unique interpretation of design. MacGuffin: ‘After all, design is about more than simply designing good ‘functional’ objects. It is also about the making itself and representation, and it reflects upon all the relationships that we have on a daily basis with the things that surround us.’

By choosing the editors of MacGuffin as curators, Het Nieuwe Instituut has opted for an exhibition that is like a three-dimensional variant of the magazine. The magazine’s mentality, perspective and identity are followed as closely as possible in the exhibition, partly thanks to the fact that Sandra Kassenaar, who designs the magazine, has also provided the graphics for the exhibition; the spatial design is by Ira Koers and Roelof Mulder. They have taken the interior of the earlier exhibition Designing the Surface, designed by Monadnock, as the starting point for a transformation of various exhibition pavilions into an architectural landscape that reveals both the infinite nature of collecting and the specificity of each collection."