The renewed Stedelijk opens at last!
The 20-year interior and exterior renovation of an Amsterdam Museum
MúzeumCafé 31.
After years of renovation and extension, the internationally renowned Stedelijk Museum reopened at the end of September. The building of the institute founded in 1874 by several Amsterdam citizens was designed by the city’s chief architect, Adriaan Willem Weissman, and was completed in 1895 next to today’s Museumplein, where other cultural institutes such as the Rijksmuseum (1885) and the Concertgebouw (1888) already stood. In 1938 the building and its collection passed into municipal ownership. The 21st-century addition to the renovated 100-year-old building is an outstanding example of harmony between past and present. The new Stedelijk covers 8000 sq. metres, which is needed since the museum’s collection contains over 90,000 modern and contemporary works of art reflecting virtually every aspect of visual culture – paintings, video installations, graphic art and objects of design. The permanent exhibition is on the ground floor of the old building. In one half the fine arts of the period from the 1870s to the 1960s are presented, more or less in chronological order, albeit divided by themes. The other half is devoted to the Stedelijk’s important collection of design, graphic and applied arts works. For the opening two temporary exhibitions were organised on the ground floor – graphic works by Kazimir Malevich, and works of the Dutch Bauhaus, including industrial design, textiles, typography and photography. The first floor will house changing objects from among the main works in the museum’s collection relating to the period from the 1960s to today. A large-scale, contemporary exhibition, was timed to coincide with the opening. It occupies the first-floor hall of the new building and the covered area in front of the museum.