Van Gogh
All 88 of Otterlo’s Van Goghs, together for a while
In the park near Otterlo, all of the Kröller-Müller Museum’s Van Gogh paintings are now on show at the same time. That is rare enough to slow your pace.
Read more ↗Discover Dutch museums
Stories from Dutch museums
Van Gogh
Helene Kröller-Müller bought up an oeuvre
Before there was a museum in the park, there was a collector who bought Van Gogh when doing so was still a statement.
Read more ↗
Van Gogh
The Bedroom: three planes that have to become a room
Two chairs, a bed, a window. And yet it is no tidy floor plan. It is a room that comes forward.
Read more ↗
Van Gogh
What he took from Japanese prints differs from sheet to sheet
He cut prints out, copied them and hung them up. One sheet is a flat branch, another a bridge that really does have depth.
Read more ↗
Van Gogh
Jo van Gogh-Bonger put the work into circulation
After Vincent and Theo died, a widow was left with a child, letters and paintings. Visibility became her work.
Read more ↗Van Gogh
Behind the sower, ripe corn still stands
In Otterlo a man scatters seed over ploughed land, while behind him the harvest is still standing.
Read more ↗
Van Gogh
When the red drops out of the mix
Purple was red plus blue. When the red disappears, what remains is a different colour from the one he mixed.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
The Night Watch is a daytime duty in motion
The name promises night. On the canvas, a captain gives the signal to set off. The light does the rest.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
A tronie with a pearl, not a passport
She looks round. The pearl catches the light. A face on canvas need promise no more than that.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
In the Oval Room, fossil and drawing belong together
Teylers in Haarlem began as a single house of knowledge. Art did not hang beside science there, but within the same idea.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
At the Depot, you see how a collection breathes
Behind the mirrored façade in Rotterdam there is no secret attic, but a building that makes storage visible.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
Trix tells us what bones do and do not hold on to
In Leiden stands a Tyrannosaurus with so much of its bone preserved that you can almost trace the shape of an animal.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
A museum for a sea that turned fresh
Enkhuizen is home to the life around a stretch of water that was given a different name in 1932. The dyke cut off the salt sea.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
Ordinary houses are history too
In Arnhem stand farmhouses, shops and workers’ homes that were in the way elsewhere. Together they make up a country of everyday life.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
The universe on a living-room ceiling
In Franeker, a model of the solar system that a wool comber built himself turns above a box bed.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
Steam you only hear when the pumping station is running
Near Lemmer stands an engine house that is usually idle. When it gets up steam, it is no longer a showpiece.
Read more ↗
Museum stories
A photograph is chemistry that keeps changing
In the Santos warehouse in Rotterdam lies a visual memory of millions of images. Not every print decays in the same way.
Read more ↗
World & object
Delft Blue is earthenware that imitates porcelain
The blue and white looks like China. Beneath the glaze lies a different body.
Read more ↗
Behind the scenes
Removing varnish is not the same as overpainting
On The Night Watch, what disappears is a later skin, not a picture. That work is precise, and not entirely reversible.
Read more ↗