By Jen Bidding Venmans
The newly re-opened Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam had been closed for the past eight years while undergoing a major expansion. As you can see from the photos the new building looks like a gigantic bathtub, or if viewed from above, an alien spaceship from the Startrek Enterprise. “Bathtub” is how the architect Mels Crouwel describes it and unfortunately that description seems to have stuck.
The material used to construct the annex is made up of 271 panels of a pioneering new composite material called Twaron® fiber. The fact that they wanted to construct an art museum out of this material is brilliant. The panels were molded together into one piece that will not expand or contract under extreme temperatures. It also won’t melt in a fire. This is comforting to know when you’re housing a billion euros worth of art.
Seeing the facade for the first time is quite impressive, unfortunately I can’t say the same for the interior. Forgive me in advance for comparing all urban modern art museums to the Tate Modern in London (all hail the Tate), but walking around the Stedelijk’s interior induced extreme feelings of claustrophobia. It’s like there was no thought put into the interior design beyond the massive grand staircase, escalators and the gift shop. Museums should flow. There should be no question about where you need to go or where you need to look. If you observe the people wandering the museum on a busy day (and let’s face it, this is Amsterdam, every day is busy) you will witness bottle-necking in the corridors and doorways, people confused about which way to turn (dead-end, go back, go back), and general confusion about where to find the exit.
A museum’s design should compliment and support the art, not distract from it. The same goes for the interior design, art placement and signage. Generally the art is hung with signage within a few feet of the piece listing the artist information. This doesn’t apply here. You have to go hunting for it.
Another thing that bothered me was the placement of several large ceramic vessels in the middle of the room. With large crowds of people you have to gingerly manoeuver around the exhibition and pray you don’t smash anything. Just in case you take a misstep and walk in between the pieces there is a full time security guard there to redirect you. If you have to hire someone to tell people where to walk in the museum I’d say you have a problem. My friend in Portland said “perhaps the artist wanted it displayed like this.” That’s a great point, but I’d be surprised to find a curator who would agree to it.
Sorry if I seem a bit nit-picky, I went to school for museum studies and we analyzed this sort of thing. Perhaps the negative reasons I list here could very well be the reasons you love this museum, in fact the more I write about it the more I fall in love with it. How did that happen? Either way, you need to go and check it out for yourself because you can see this:
and this:
and this: (plus a whole lot more)…
The Art Bureau is currently working on the Top Ten Places to Visit in the Netherlands. The list will be coming to you soon. Before I go I want to leave you with the portrait of the Dutch Queen Beatrix that greets you as you enter the museum.
It was painted by the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans. Let’s be honest; he’s not the first artist to portray royalty looking like they just woke up from a ten-day drug overdose. (Think Velasquez and Goya). At first I hated this painting but now I absolutely adore it. In an interview with The Independent Tuymans said he preferred Jan van Eyck to Rubens because “Rubens was probably the most important and best painter in the western hemisphere.” Born and raised in Antwerp, Tuymans added “If you are brought up with that what are you going to do with it? It is so f**king perfect you are traumatized from the start.”
Indeed, Luc Tuymans, indeed.
The Art Bureau 