During my recent stay in the Netherlands I have visited an unusually large number of museums…:-). I have reported already about the two patrician canal mansions and the Royal Palace. Here are four more, in chronological order.

During the usual visit to my sister, she suggested that we could visit the Kranenburgh Museum in Bergen. Bergen is a village in the province of North-Holland, in the first part of the 20th century it was an “artist colony”.The expressionist Bergen School of painting had its origin here and the museum contains many works of art from that period.

But that’s not why we went there. In December 2015 a special exhibition was opened, prepared by guest curator Joost Zwagerman, and titled “Silence out loud”  Various aspects of silence in art. I found the exhibition very impressive, really evoking silence. 

Joost Zwagerman, a Dutch writer and columnist has been working two years on this project. And he has not seen the final result, because he took his own life, a few months before the opening of the exhibition. Sad.

A few days later I visited an exhibition about Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in the Singer museum in Laren. Laren is another Dutch art colony and the Singer museum has many works of art from the “Haagse School“.

Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and one of the founders of the artist group Die Brücke. I like his work, it is always a pleasure to come across his paintings in a museum and in this exhibition they had collected many of his works of art.

Born in 1880, he volunteered for military service in 1914, but was discharged soon after a mental breakdown. Having health problems, he moved to Davos in Switzerland and stayed there the rest of his life. One of his friends there was the Dutch painter Jan Wiegers, one of the founders of the artist collective De Ploeg. See below…:-). With the rise of Nazism his art was considered “entartet” (degenerate) and many of his paintings were destroyed. Worried that Hitler might invade Switzerland, he killed himself in 1938.

My next museum visit was to the Groninger museum. Here in December 2015 an exhibition opened about David Bowie. I am a fan of this fascinating artist. When his album Ziggie Stardust was published in 1972, I was beginning to discover the “alternative” pop music. I would have liked to see this exhibition, but it was planned to close early March, before I came back to the Netherlands.

Then, on 10 January 2016, he died, just after publishing the album Blackstar, with the macabre song Lazarus . The number of visitors surged and the museum decided to prolong the exhibition until the beginning of April, extending the opening times. You had to book a time slot!  I visited the exhibition on 31 March, and it was an impressive multimedia experience. Photography and sound recording not allowed, understandable. Secretly I took one picture, just for the record…:-)

My time slot started at 4pm, I arrived early, so I decided in the meantime to have a look at the permanent collection of…. De Ploeg, mentioned above…;-)! That was a good idea. Interesting to compare the two expressionist schools, their differences and similarities. In Laren one painting by Jan Wiegers, here two paintings by Kirchner.

The last museum visit was actually rather accidental…:-). I was going to meet after many years a former colleague from my school, and she suggested that we could have coffee in the museum cafe of the Allard Pierson museum in the center of Amsterdam. This is the archaeological museum of the University of Amsterdam. But when we were there, we noticed that there was a temporary exhibition, called the DWDD Pop-Up Museum 2. DWDD is a popular Dutch television talkshow, which I avoid to watch because I am allergic to the ADHD host…:-).

He has quite a few regular guests in his show and the Pop-Up Museum is a project where these guests are asked to select a museum of their choice, visit the depot (where usually most of a museum collection is kept) , choose some works of art and create a room for the exhibition. Actually an interesting idea. The first edition of this project was a success, this is the second one, open until 22 May 2016.There are nine rooms, here a selection. In the captions you see the name of the guest and the museum they have selected.

Altogether seven museums in one month. Not bad..:-)

The Dam Square in Amsterdam can be considered the center of the town. It is dominated by the Royal Palace. Here is a Google Earth image.

This monumental building has not always been a palace. It was built in the seventeenth century as the Town Hall of Amsterdam and functioned as such for 150 years. For a long time it was the largest administrative building in Europe and considered by many the Eight Wonder of the World.

In 1808 Louis Napoleon, brother of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, became King of Holland and converted the Town Hall into a Palace. Not for long, in 1813, after the fall of Napoleon, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was established and the former town hall became a Palace of the Royal House of Orange. Nowadays it is a ceremonial palace, still in use for the inauguration of a new monarch and other official functions.

Left a painting of the Town Hall as it was in 1673, right the present situation.

When not in use, part of the palace is open to the public. Here is a map of the main floor.

The impressive Burgerzaal (Citizens Hall) was the center of the Town Hall, freely accessible for the citizens of Amsterdam. Galleries lead to the various administrative offices

Ceilings and upper parts of the walls are decorated by paintings of famous Dutch Golden Age artists

It is not easy to see details of the paintings, because they are very high up the walls. Many of them show historical scenes, related to the fight for independence of the Dutch Republic. Here are two images, taken from the Internet. Left The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis (1559-1562) by Govert Flinck and right Brinio Raised on a Shield (1661) by Jan Lievens. Click on the link and then on “details” for more information about these paintings.

It is interesting to note that Rembrandt, the most famous painter of his time, is not represented! Actually he created a painting about the same topic of Claudius Civilis as Govert Flinck and for a few months it was exhibited in the town hall. Then, for reasons unclear, it was returned to Rembrandt, who cut down the huge canvas (5×5 meter) to more manageable proportions . It is now in the Nationalmuseum of Stockholm and considered one of his masterpieces…:-)

Here are two more paintings. Amsterdam,  the leading city of the Dutch Republic, saw itself as the successor to the Roman Republic.  Its “burgomasters” (mayors) liked to identify themselves with the Roman consuls. Left, Fabritius and Pyrrhus (1656) by Ferdinand Bol, shows the consul Fabritius resisting the bribery attempts of  King Pyrrhus. Right, in The incorruptible Consul Marcus Curius Dentatus (1656) by Govert Flinck, the consul holds up a turnip, waving away the gold and other gifts, offered to bribe him.  Again: click on the links and then on “details” for more info.

On the map above, the original function of the various rooms is indicated. When the town hall was transformed into a palace, these rooms became bedrooms, dining rooms, ballrooms etc. They were furnished in Empire style. Even now some of the rooms are used as guestrooms for heads of state and other VVIP persons during official functions.

The admission price for the Palace includes a headset. Explanations are given by a former mayor of Amsterdam. Very informative!

Two contrasting pictures to end this blog. In the left picture you can see the Dam Square and the balcony, from which traditionally the new monarch is presented to the people. This balcony is not original, it has been added in 1808 by Louis Napoleon. The picture to the right is the only part of the ground floor that you can visit. It is the Tribunal, just below the room with the balcony, where death sentences were pronounced. After the verdict the criminal was taken up to the first floor, where a temporary scaffolding was constructed and the execution (by hanging) took place. The executions were public, visible to the people on the Dam square.

When you visit Amsterdam, you should spend a few hours in this monumental building! And when you can not visit Amsterdam in the real, you can make a virtual tour, using the Google Cultural Institute !  Just amazing, what would we be without Google…:-)