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Amsterdam: a city of the arts
Rijksmuseum, photo by Arie de Leeuw Insights for Visitors to Amsterdam in 2009 by Drs. Kees Kaldenbach Tips for Nix - to visit Amsterdam Museums in 2009-2010: Tourists hoping to visit the many great art museums in the Dutch city of Amsterdam are in for a few surprises in 2009-2010. Somebody out there decided that closing down three major museums simultaneously was a terrific idea. “Not quite!” Rijksmuseum (State Art Museum) Inside, this famous building now looks like Berlin just after the WWII bombing raids. The main Rijksmuseum building, dating from 1885, with its world famous collection of paintings by Dutch masters including Rembrandt, Vermeer and Frans Hals is presently being completely gutted from the inside. Visitors to Amsterdam need not despair, however. During the renovation period a very good selection of the paintings and art object masterpieces are still on show in a small annex at the south side of the main edifice, near Paulus Potter Street. The reopening of the totally remodeled and revamped main structure is now slated for sometime in 2012 or 2013, many years later than initially planned. The reason for this painful and maddening delay in re-opening of the main structure, lies in the combination of red tape and egos in planning permission discussions and entanglements. For a number of decades, the City of Amsterdam has been carved like a cake into small districts in order to bring local government services closer to district inhabitants. Authority regarding most planning permission paperwork has also been shifted to these districts. As the Rijksmuseum building happens to be located in the Amsterdam-South district, the museum’s renovation project has thus been placed under the control of one of these city district government branches, which has to deal with the mountain of paperwork. It seems that they are not quite equipped to deal with this type of project of international importance. One of the many vexing problems facing planners, architects, and permission officers was the bicycle thoroughfare running through the central portion of the museum. From its inception in 1885, the building was not only a museum but also served as a central gate arch for traffic between the city centre and the Amsterdam-South district. At first the team of architects team from Spain, Ortiz y Cruz, blissfully unaware of the national importance of this unhampered bicycle traffic, scrapped this route, and positioned the ticket desk and coat racks in the centre, smack under the large arches. It was just one of many problems needing rethinking and correction. Also due to the problems sketched above, the whole project has slowed down to snail-like pace. We will have to see whether reopening in 2013 is feasible as foreseen right now. The result is to become a presentation as an integration of Dutch art and Dutch history. In the future rooms, the paintings and objects such as furniture will be mixed in the interest of story telling. This forms a clear break with the tradition of over 100 years of presentation in which paintings were shown independently and spoke on their own – predominantly the language of aesthetics. Will the new mix work? Time and experience will tell. Use this link for further information . . . . Extra Tip: try to get a Friday-only ‘Hard Hat Tour’ ticket to the Rijksmuseum, at €15,- per ticket. The Internet page is only available in Dutch, but online booking is self-explanatory; Link for further information . . . . Stedelijk Museum (Municipal Modern Art Museum) Please bear in mind that this ENTIRE building has closed down for the time being. The Amsterdam Museum of Modern Art, called the Stedelijk Museum is also located on Museumplein (Museum Square) and is therefore governed by the same official municipal district and its interesting history of red tape. The building also dates from the late nineteenth century, and opened ten years after the Rijksmuseum did. At the time it housed design objects and period rooms. Just after WW II, its iconoclastic director Willem Sandberg, blew like a hurricane through the museum, doing away with the old. He had the hallway painted white. On show during one of the first exhibitions were works by members of the CoBrA group, comprised of avant-garde artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. During the 1950s and 1960s the entire museum shifted its focus to become a world-class centre of modern art, specifically for painting. Here the planning permission also brought construction activities to a halt for quite some time. Entanglements with competing architects also stood in the way. Initially, the Portuguese architect Siza was selected, but the process got bogged down. Finally the Dutch firm Benthem Crouwel was contracted, and their plans required the complete gutting of the interior of the existing building. Lacking an annex to display a selection of its finest artworks, the whole museum has now been totally closed down. Re-opening is slated for December 2009, according to the museum website. Who knows if that deadline is realistic? Meanwhile the museum presents itself in various parts of the city, in big metal “art containers” that give the impression that they just fell off a container freight ship. And there are a few exhibitions on various themes and variations in other large buildings in Amsterdam where hosting exhibitions are organized. Link for further information . . . . Maritime Museum –closed down completely for now. Amsterdamers who are into shipping also grunt about the complete closing down of the large Maritime Museum (Scheepvaart Museum) located by the harbor. This fine museum with thousands of paintings, model ships, objects and even many hundreds of actual small and mid-sized ships is scheduled to reopen in 2010 according to the museum’s website. Planning permission delays and civil engineering problems are again named as the main reasons for this extended closing period. So give the Maritime Museum a pass for now. Link for further information . . . . And now for the goodies… I’ll give away some tips for nix now – just to try and talk you into coming to Amsterdam anyway this year. Do some serious online shopping at the big hotel chains and ask for an extra rebate. Presently the big ones at Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal address and elsewhere are competing and will sell rooms at a cut rate because their level of occupancy is low. Get yourself a cracking good guide to explore seventeenth century architecture in the inner city and the new architectural developments by the harbor. Or an excellent guide to give you the thrill of your vacation in front of a Vermeer or Rembrandt painting and really learn how to observe and see in-depth. Link for further information . . . . Play the game of “Observe the museum go-ers” as if they are a rare species and you are the zoologist. Predict their body movement and their next steps and turns. Predict how long they will stay in front of painting x or y and give yourself points for winning. Eavesdrop for a while and analyze what they talk about and then make some notes in your diary on human fallibility and destiny. Buy a field guide for observing chimps to help you along. Start museum going by buying an Annual Museum Pass for E 35,-. In Dutch: Museum Jaar Kaart, at the cash register of the very first big museum you enter. Write your name and birth date on the card. This wonderful museum pass will be valid for the next 365 days all over The Netherlands and will let you in most anywhere for free. Most museums have a normal one-time entry fee of E 10,- so in three or four visits you have recouped the cost. With this annual Museum Card in hand you also bypass the waiting lines outside the Vincent van Gogh Museum. Just take the stairwell on the far right hand of the big platform and smile benevolently at those human beings meekly waiting in line at the other queues. Inside the first door you do NOT buy a ticket – instead the guards just swipe the museum card for you at the inside gate. NEMO roof. When you are walking at the harbor, climb the roof of the technical museum NEMO, the hands-on technology museum for kids instead. This gives you an excellent view of the city, free of charge. If you are on a budget, eat pancakes. These are flat- large crepe-like goodies, which are served either with sweets such as jam and syrup or with savory ingredients like cheese and ham. I recommend from personal experience the one close by the Anne Frank House. Link for further information . . . . And then… some Amsterdam museums are miraculously still open! - Amsterdams Historisch Museum (The Amsterdam Historical Museum) - Anne Frank House - The New Hermitage (St. Petersburg annex on the Amstel river) - Joods Historisch Museum (Jewish Historical Museum) - Rembrandt House - Tropen Museum (Tropical Museum) - And there are many, many other museums and architectural masterworks to see, and hidden treasures wait to meet your eye – in a highly personal meeting.
Drs. Kees Kaldenbach Editor's note: Drs. Kees Kaldenbach is an art historian providing custom tours of art museums in Amsterdam as well as in other parts of The Netherlands. In Amsterdam he also gives city walks; including an inner city architectural walk, a Rembrandt walk and even a Red Light District walk. Kees also serves as a consultant on movie and TV productions. For more information follow this link to his see the Private Art Tours website . . . .
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