Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam houses the largest collection of art works by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) in the world The permanent collection includes more than 200 paintings by Vincent van Gogh, 500 drawings and more than 750 letters The museum also presents exhibitions on various subjects from 19th-century art history

The Van Gogh Museum has the largest Van Gogh collection in the world It comprises 200 paintings, 400 drawings, and 700 letters by Vincent van Gogh.The Van Gogh Museum is a museum dedicated to the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, on the Paulus Potterstraat and the Museumplein in Amsterdam, in the Zuid district. The collection of the museum contains more than two hundred paintings, five hundred drawings and seven hundred letters from Vincent van Gogh, as well as his collection of Japanese prints, and the library comprises more than 23,000 works.

The Van Gogh Museum makes the life and work of Vincent van Gogh and the art of his time accessible to as many people as possible in order to enrich and inspire them.

The Van Gogh Museum is leading, excellent and inspiring. The core values function as an ethical compass and are at the heart of corporate culture at the museum.

The main exhibition chronicles the various phases of Van Gogh’s artistic life The museum opened on 2 June 1973 It is located in buildings designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa The museum’s collection is the largest collection of Van Gogh’s paintings and drawings in the world.

History:
Only two paintings of Van Gogh were sold by Vincent van Gogh. After his death, Vincent left his complete work to his younger brother, Theo van Gogh. At Theo’s death the collection passed into the hands of his widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger. She sold a number of works, but kept a collection that was representative of Van Gogh’s oeuvre. After her death in 1925, the artworks came into the possession of her son Vincent Willem van Gogh.

In 1960, he founded the Vincent van Gogh Foundation. In addition to himself and his wife, his three living children also had a seat in the foundation, as well as a representative of the Dutch government.

On 21 July 1962 an agreement was signed between the State of the Netherlands and the Vincent van Gogh Foundation. The Van Gogh family contributed the entire collection, consisting of 200 paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, 400 drawings, and all letters from Vincent, to the state for 15 million guilders. The most important condition was that the entire collection would be housed in a museum dedicated to Van Gogh. This laid the foundation for the Van Gogh Museum. The museum opened its doors in 1973 with Emile Meijer as its first director. At the time it was a national museum, nowadays the museum is an independent foundation and the paintings are part of the national collection.

The collection was inherited by her son Vincent Willem van Gogh in 1925, eventually loaned to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam where it was displayed for many years, and was transferred to the state-initiated Vincent van Gogh Foundation in 1962

Architecture
The museum is situated at the Museumplein in Amsterdam-Zuid, on the Paulus Potterstraat 7, between the Stedelijk Museum and the Rijksmuseum The museum consists of two buildings, the Rietveld building, designed by Gerrit Rietveld, and the Kurokawa wing, designed by Kisho Kurokawa The museum offices are housed on Stadhouderskade 55 in Amsterdam-Zuid

Two buildings – the Rietveld Building and the Kurokawa Wing – together form the Van Gogh Museum. The new entrance hall connects both buildings.

The Rietveld Building
The Rietveld building is the main structure of the museum and exhibits the permanent collection The building has a rectangular floor plan and is four stories high On the ground floor are a shop, a café, and the introductory part of the art exhibition The first floor shows the works of Van Gogh grouped chronologically The second floor gives information about the restoration of paintings and has a space for minor temporary exhibitions The third floor shows paintings of Van Gogh’s contemporaries in relationship to the work of Van Gogh himself

The museum’s permanent collection is on display in the main building in Paulus Potterstraat, designed by the architect Gerrit Rietveld in 1963-64.

Rietveld was an important member of De Stijl, a group of progressive artists and architects active in the 1920s. Rietveld’s modernist vision stressed geometric shapes and light, open spaces. This is particularly evident in the staircase in the central hall, where the daylight streams into the museum galleries through a high skylight.

The Kurokawa Wing
The Kurokawa wing is used for major temporary exhibitions The building has an oval floor plan and is three stories high The entrance to the Kurokawa wing is via an underground tunnel from the Rietveld building

Kisho Kurokawa designed the museum’s exhibition wing, which opened in 1999. Kurokawa was known above all for his original designs for Japanese museums and for Kuala Lumpur airport. All his major design principles are reflected in the exhibition wing—for example, the symbiosis between environment and architecture, and between Japanese and European culture. As a contrast to Rietveld’s cube, Kurokawa opted for asymmetry—the building is elliptical and the box-shaped print room is at an angle to the axis of the wing. The exhibition wing extension to the museum was made possible by the support of The Japan Foundation and the Tokyo-based Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company Ltd.

The New Entrance Hall
The new entrance hall opens to the public on 5 September 2015. For the new entrance building, Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates made a sketch that consists in broad outlines of a further elaboration of the elliptical wing of the building that they had built in Amsterdam in 1999. This idea is further developed, materialized, and realized by Hans van Heeswijk Architects.

The open and transparent entrance hall has been built using the very latest glass construction techniques. The frontage consists of 650 square metres of cold bent glass, with 30 so-called ‘roof fins’ – also in glass and up to 12 metres in length – and 20 glass columns up to 9.4 metres high, all mounted on a load-bearing structure containing 65 tonnes of steel.

The new glass structure is positioned between the original museum building designed by Gerrit Rietveld and the more recent temporary exhibitions wing, providing better access to and between them.

Collection:
Works by Vincent van Gogh:
The Van Gogh Museum has the largest Van Gogh collection in the world. It comprises 200 paintings, 400 drawings, and 700 letters by Vincent van Gogh.

The main exhibition chronicles the various phases of Van Gogh’s artistic life.

His selected works from Nuenen (1880–1885):

Avenue of Poplars in Autumn (1884)
The Potato Eaters (1885)
His selected works from Antwerp (1886):

Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette (1886)
His selected works from Paris (1886–1888):

Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin (1887)
Wheat Field with a Lark (1887)
View of Paris from Vincent’s Room in the Rue Lepic (1887)
His selected works from Arles (1888–1889):

The Zouave (1888)
Bedroom in Arles (1888)
The Yellow House (1888)
Sunflowers (1889)
His selected works from Saint-Rémy (1889–1890):

Almond Blossoms (1890)
And his selected works from Auvers-sur-Oise (1890):

Wheatfield with Crows (1890)
The permanent collection also includes nine of the artist’s self-portraits and some of his earliest paintings dating back to 1882.

Works by his contemporaries:
The museum also features notable art works by Van Gogh’s contemporaries in the Impressionist and post-Impressionist movements and holds extensive exhibitions on various subjects from 19th Century art history.

The museum has sculptures by Auguste Rodin and Jules Dalou, and paintings by Émile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Kees van Dongen, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Vision
The vision is based on the museum’s mission and core values, and it also takes external influences and the most significant stakeholders into consideration.

The Van Gogh Museum is one of the leading and most accessible museums in the world. It is inspirational and strives for excellence in all its activities.

The Van Gogh Museum excels in carrying out its Primary Objectives, delivered by the sectors of Museum Affairs, Public Affairs and Operations, and to achieve this, collaborates with various parties.

The main objective of the Van Gogh Museum is the management and conservation of the collection and making this accessible to as many people as possible. The Van Gogh Museum has ensured optimal access to the collection and its buildings.

The Van Gogh Museum reaches as many visitors and non-visitors as possible, creating dialogue with the public alongside a high degree of public involvement.

The Van Gogh Museum secures additional income, partly through developing new business models and the continued professionalisation of fundraising activities.

The museum provides to visitors a variety of services, like lectures about Vincent van Gogh or his contemporaries, workshops, guided tours. There are also activities, offered for children created to make the study of Vincent van Gogh’s art easy and interesting for them.