In this article we are going to explore the most popular art museums in Netherlands. If you are an art lover and you are visiting or planning to visit the Netherlands, you can’t miss its spectacular museums, some of them ranked in the list of the most visited museums worldwide
The Best Art Museums in Netherlands
1- Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to the arts and history of Holland and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located on Museum Square in the Amsterdam South district, near the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Concertgebouw.
The Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague on November 19, 1798 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808, where it was first located in the Royal Palace and later in the Trippenhuis.
The current main building was designed by Pierre Cuypers and opened in 1885. On April 13, 2013, after a ten-year renovation costing 375 million euros, the main building was reopened by Queen Beatrix
In 2013 and 2014, it was the most visited museum in the Netherlands, with record numbers of 2.2 million and 2.47 million visitors. It is also the largest art museum in the country.
The museum has 8,000 art and history objects on display, from its total collection of 1 million objects from the years 1200-2000, including some masterpieces by Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Johannes Vermeer. It also has a small Asian collection, which is displayed in the Asia pavilion.
The collection contains more than 2,000 paintings from the Dutch Golden Age by notable painters such as Jacob van Ruisdael, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen, Rembrandt and Rembrandt’s pupils.
The museum also has a small Asian collection on display in the Asia pavilion.
Also on display is the stern of the HMS Royal Charles that was captured in the Medway Raid, and the Hartog plaque.
In 2012, the museum made some 125,000 high-resolution images available for download through its Rijksstudio web platform, with plans to add another 40,000 images a year until the full collection of one million works is available, according to Taco Dibbits, director of collections. As of January 2021, the Rijksstudio houses 700,000 works, available under a Creative Commons 1.0 Universal license, essentially royalty- and copyright-free.
2- Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries, located in Amsterdam South’s Museum Square, near the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum and the Concertgebouw
The museum opened on June 2, 1973, and its buildings were designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa.
The museum contains the largest collection of Van Gogh paintings and drawings in the world. In 2017, the had 2.3 million visitors and was the most visited museum in the Netherlands, and the 23rd most visited art museum in the world
In 2019, the Van Gogh Museum launched the Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience, a technology-driven“immersive exhibition” about Van Gogh’s life and works, which has toured the world.
The Van Gogh collection features more than 200 paintings, 400 drawings and 700 letters by the artist, belonging to different periods of the artist’s life
The museum also features notable works of art by Van Gogh’s contemporaries in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements, and holds extensive exhibitions on various themes in 19th-century art history.
The museum features sculptures by Auguste Rodin and Jules Dalou, and paintings by John Russell, Émile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Kees van Dongen, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
3- Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Amsterdam Municipal Museum), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum of modern art, contemporary art and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The 19th century building was designed by Adriaan Willem Weissman and the 21st century wing with the current entrance was designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects. It is located on Museum Square in the Amsterdam South district, where it is close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum and the Concertgebouw.
The collection comprises modern and contemporary art and design from the early 20th century to the 21st century. It features artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Karel Appel, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Marlene Dumas, Lucio Fontana and Gilbert & George.
In 2015, the museum had an estimated 675,000 visitors.
The museum’s collection boasts nearly 90,000 objects, assembled since 1874. With major groups and cores focusing on De Stijl, Bauhaus, Pop Art and CoBrA and , more recently, Neo-Impressionism, the collection represents virtually every significant art and design movement of the 20th and 21st centuries
The Stedelijk also has an extensive collection of drawings and paintings by Kazimir Malevich. Key pieces by post-impressionists Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh exemplify the art of the late 19th century. The collection is subdivided into the following disciplines
- Painting
- Sculpture
- Installation
- Moving image and sound
- Prints and drawings
- Posters
- Photography
- Graphic design
- Industrial design
- Artist’s books
- Lucebert Archive
In early 2010, the Stedelijk Museum partnered with design agency Fabrique and augmented reality company Layar to develop virtual art tours called“ARtours.”
Thanks to smartphone technology, visitors receive additional stories and images about the collection, both inside the museum and outside in the city. In the final phase of this project, in late 2011, the public was invited to add their own stories, images and other information through the open source platform.
In 2018, a mural created by Keith Haring in 1986 in the Stedelijk Museum’s storage room came to light after being covered by aluminum foil a few years after its completion. The 12-meter mural is the artist’s largest public work and was created for his first solo exhibition in a museum
4- Mauritshuises
The Mauritshuises is an art museum in The Hague, Netherlands
The museum houses the Royal Cabinet of Paintings, which consists of 854 objects, mostly paintings from the Dutch Golden Age
The collection contains works by Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen, Paulus Potter, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael and Hans Holbein the Younger, among others
Originally, the 17th century building was the residence of Count John Maurice of Nassau. It is now owned by the government of the Netherlands and is included in the list of the top 100 Dutch heritage sites.
The collection of paintings by the statesman William V, Prince of Orange, was gifted to the Dutch state by his son, King William I. This collection formed the basis of the Royal Cabinet of Paintings, with some 200 paintings
Today, the collection is called the Royal Picture Gallery. The current collection consists of almost 800 paintings and focuses on Dutch and Flemish artists, such as Pieter Brueghel, Paulus Potter, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacob van Ruisdael, Johannes Vermeer and Rogier van der Weyden. There are also works by Hans Holbein in the collection of the Mauritshuis.
5- Kröller-Müller Museum
The Kröller-Müller Museum is a national art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo, the Netherlands
The museum, founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller on the extensive grounds of her and her husband’s former estate (now the national park), opened in 1938
It holds the second largest collection of Vincent van Gogh paintings, after the Van Gogh Museum. The museum received 380,000 visitors in 2015.
The museum has a considerable collection of Vincent van Gogh paintings, including Café Terrace at Night, Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate) and a version of The Potato Eaters, making it the second largest collection of Van Gogh paintings in the world (after the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam)
In addition to Van Gogh’s paintings, other highlights include works by Piet Mondrian, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Odilon Redon, Georges Braque, Paul Gauguin, Lucas Cranach, James Ensor, Juan Gris, William Degouve de Nuncques and Pablo Picasso.
6- Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem
The Frans Hals Museum is a museum located in Haarlem, Netherlands.
The museum was founded in 1862. In 1950, the museum was divided into two locations when the modern art collection was moved to Museum De Hallen (since 2018 called Hal)
The main collection, including his famous 17th century paintings by Frans Hals, which give the museum its name, is housed in the former Oude Mannenhuis in the Groot Heiligland.
The museum was founded in 1862 in the newly renovatedformer cloister of the Dominican church at the rear of Haarlem’s town hall, known as Prinsenhof, and when it needed more space, it moved to the recently vacated location of the city’s orphanage in 1913.
The collection draws on the large number of paintings owned by the city of Haarlem, including more than 100 works of art seized from Catholic churches in the 1580s after the Protestant Reformation, and Haarlem art salvaged from demolished local buildings from the 15th century onward.
In 2018 the museum merged with Museum De Hallen to form a single museum called the Frans Hals Museum with two locations: Hof (located in Groot Heiligland) and Hal (located in Grote Markt).
In addition to several works by Hals and other works of art from the collections of many of Haarlem’s former guilds, monasteries and churches, the collection of more than 750 works also includes objects related to Haarlem that have been acquired through donations and local purchases
The museum specializes in the restoration and research of the works of the 17th century Haarlem painters and the 16th century painters who taught them to paint, notably Jan van Scorel, Maerten van Heemskerck, Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem
At the end of the 19th century, the museum became a kind of pilgrimage site for young Impressionists, fascinated by the loose brushwork seen in the two group portraits of regents that Hals painted when he was in his eighties. This is the reason why, after the move to the present location in 1913, the museum adopted the name Frans Hals, as these paintings were considered the highlights of the collection at the time
It is still famous for Hals’ group portraits, but as the group portraits of the military guilds were cleaned up in the early 20th century, it is these that most visitors come to see today
Most of the objects and paintings cannot be displayed due to lack of space, and the museum rotates its collection through exhibitions at various locations in Haarlem, although works by some prominent painters cannot be loaned and remain in storage.
Do you know of other art museums in the Netherlands?
The Netherlands has an enormous variety of museums. In this article we have selected only some of the most outstanding and visited museums in the country. If you have visited the Netherlands and know of other art museums that you think should be on this list, leave us a comment and tell us about that museum, what kind of art it exhibits and why you think we should include it
Here we leave you several lists with the most popular and outstanding museums in different countries:
