Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

The Buildings – Old and New
The Stedelijk´s main building was built in the years 1891-1895 at Paulus Potterstraat, at the short walking distance from the Rijksmuseum, to house the collection of art and antiques left to the city by Sophia Augusta Lopez Suasso de Bruyn. The project of the old Stedelijk building was by A.W.Weissman, Amsterdam city architect at the time. It was a period when Dutch architecture was searching for its values in the historical past. Happily the Stedelijk´s neo renaissance façade, decorated with several figurative sculptures, has been modernized and simplified during the following renovations, losing much of its rich decorum.

In 1938 the Stedelijk became the state museum of modern art. In 1973, from the part of the Stedelijk Museum collection, the Van Gogh Museum has been created, just at its side, in a modern building created by Gerrit Rietveld.

Still, people of Amsterdam like the old Weissman building, probably because of the contrast it creates with the modern collections exhibited inside. Present renovations will double the exhibition space of the museum by adding a big and new modern building behind. It was designed by an Amsterdam firm Benthem Crouwel Architects, in the intriguing shape of the immense bath standing on its legs directly on the Museumplein.

The Collection
The Stedelijk Museum has one of the richest modern art collections in the world. Along with all big names of modern painting movements as Impressionists, Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and it has a unique collection of 29 paintings by Casimir Malevich, equally exceptional collection of De Stijl and Cobra movement, superb Dutch photography collection, a very good collection of design and furniture, and interesting collection of European and American trends in art since 1950 as works of Matisse, Picasso, Newman en Rauschenberg, Warhol completed with Italian Arte Povera and German modern painting.

Stedelijk in the City - the temporary exhibits
According to most recent plans, the renovation of The Stedelijk Museum will be completed in December of 2009 and the museum will reopen to the visitors in spring of 2010. Until that time, the Museum tries to participate in the Amsterdam cultural life through interesting temporary exhibits, which are organized in different public spaces across the city. This series of exhibits of modern art is called Stedelijk in de Stad – Stedelijk in the City. Pleas inquire their special website (only in Dutch) for the actual program: www.stedelijkindestad.nl

100 X Photo: 100 Photographs from the Collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam