The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈsteːdələk myˈzeːjʏm ˌɑmstərˈdɑm]; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The 19th-century building was designed by Adriaan Willem Weissman. The connecting 21st-century wing, which houses the current entrance, was designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, 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 up to the present day. 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 2024, the museum had an estimated 574,000 visitors. Its 2024 budget was around €37 million, and counted around 200 members of staff.
History
19th century
The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, opened on 14 September 1895 as an initiative of the local authority and private individuals. The Dutch Neo-Renaissance style museum building was designed by Dutch architect Adriaan Willem Weissman as part of a modernization project spearheaded by local citizens starting in 1850. The construction of the building was largely funded by Sophia Adriana de Bruyn. Specifically, it was built under the patronage of the Vereeniging tot het Vormen van een Verzameling van Hedendaagsche Kunst (VVHK, 'Society for the formation of a public collection of contemporary art'). The society has been founded in 1874 to house de Bruyn's collection of art and antiques that she donated to the city along with a considerable sum of money. The Van Eeghen family of bankers also contributed to the construction costs and donated paintings from the collection of Christiaan Pieter van Eeghen. The building was constructed between 1891 and 1895 at Paulus Potterstraat, a short walking distance from the Rijksmuseum. The museum's original collection included militaria of the Amsterdam militia, Asiatic art, and artifacts from the Museum of Chronometry and the Medical-Pharmaceutical Museum.
20th century In 1905, Cornelis Baard was appointed curator of the Stedelijk and promoted to museum director in 1920. During his time as curator, the local authority began building its own collection of modern art. However, the Great Depression in the Netherlands led to municipal cutbacks and an increased need for policy reviews in the first half of the 1930s. In 1932, a purchasing committee was established with two members from the VVHK and two from the local authority. These four figures oversaw all art purchases for the museum, notably works of Hague and Amsterdam Impressionism and pieces by international contemporaries. The museum began actively acquiring art in 1930. In 1933, M.B.B. Nijkerk's collection of books came to the Stedelijk; the focus of museum would later expand to include book design and typography. The Museum of Applied Art opened on the ground floor of the west wing on 15 December 1934. This collection included furniture, glass, pottery, and china, graphic design and posters, textiles, small sculptures and masks, batik, metalwork, and stained glass with an emphasis on Dutch work from around the turn of the century. In 1936, David Röell, who had previously worked at the Rijksmuseum and was secretary of the VVHK, took over as museum director. Röell appointed Willem Sandberg as the new curator in January 1938. Sandberg eventually took over as director of the museum in 1945. By 1962, the VVHK handed over most of its collection, including works by George Hendrik Breitner, Paul Cézanne, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Vincent van Gogh, and Johan Jongkind. Sandberg's direction show a radical expansion in the collecting policy of the Stedelijk. A department of applied art was instigated in 1945 and a department of prints and drawings in 1954. At the start of 1950, the Stedelijk also began to present modern music. In 1952, it became host to the newly established Nederlands Filmmuseum, and started showing films. The annex known as the Sandberg Wing was built in 1954 to accommodate experimental art. By 1956, a reading room, print room, a museum restaurant and garden, and a new auditorium for film screenings and musical performances were added. In the same year, Sandberg began acquiring photography for the museum's collection; the Stedelijk was the first western European museum for modern art to collect photography. The collection includes seminal photographers of both the Dutch and international avant-garde in the interbellum period (such as Erwin Blumenfeld, László Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray), an extensive selection of post-war Dutch photographers (including Eva Besnyö, Ed van der Elsken and Cas Oorthuys), artist portraits, photojournalism, and autonomous fine art photography from the 1970s onward. During World War II, the Stedelijk collection and that of the Amsterdam Museum were transferred for safekeeping to a bunker in the sand-hills near Santpoort. Museum staff took turns keeping watch. Sandberg narrowly managed to evade arrest: in 1943, when a German search party was sent to apprehend him, Sandberg fled by bicycle into the dunes. Despite the upheavals of war, the Stedelijk continued to hold exhibitions. Works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Henri Matisse were added to the collection at the end of the 1940s and 1950s. During this time, the Stedelijk also acquired artworks by De Stijl and related international movements such as Russian Constructivism and Bauhaus. Sandberg acquired a group of works by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1958, giving it the largest collection of Malevich works outside Russia.
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