STEDELIJK MUSEUM

Description

Essentials about the Stedelijk Museum in brief

For lovers of modern art, a visit to the Stedelijk Museum (Municipal Museum) is a must in Amsterdam. The museum is one of the leading exhibition venues of contemporary art in the world, where all major trends of modern art are represented with numerous works by important artists. The Stedelijk Museum is located on the Museumplein in the immediate vicinity of other top museums, such as the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum.

The history of the Stedelijk Museum

The name Stedelijk Museum is a bit misleading, as it has next to nothing to do with the museum’s collection today. Rather, it stems from the museum’s founding purpose as an urban history museum for Amsterdam. In 1895, the Stedelijk Museum was built to display the estate of Jewish art and antiquities collector Pieter Lopez Suasso. The museum building was designed by A.W. Weissman in the neo-Renaissance style. Initially, furniture, coins, silverware, jewelry and home furnishings from old Amsterdam houses were displayed. In addition, it was also possible to see a collection of weapons, as well as an old pharmacy interior.

Between 1920 and 1940, parts of the collections began to be moved to other museums. At the same time, a collection of contemporary Dutch and French art was established. From 1930, the museum housed the extensive Van Gogh collection, which moved next door to its own museum in 1972 (see the Van Gogh Museum). In the early 1970s, the last of the historic apartment furnishings were moved out, and the museum established itself as Amsterdam’s premier destination for modern art. Since 2012, the old museum building has been complemented by an extraordinary new building. Why this is popularly called “The Bathtub” becomes clear when you take a look at the building.

The collection of the Stedelijk Museum

Today, all the major currents of modern art are represented in exemplary fashion in the Stedelijk Museum, and the list of artists on display reads like a who’s who of contemporary art. In addition to artists of classical modernism (Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall), extensive groups of works by the artist communities De Stijl (Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Gerrit Rietveld) and CoBrA (Karel Appel) are on display. In addition, German Expressionists, American Pop Art, video artists (Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman), Arte Povera, contemporary German art (Reinhard Mucha, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, A. R. Penck) and current British art (Gilbert & George, Damien Hirst) will be exhibited.