A quick tour of museums in the Netherlands

 

The Depot Boijmans van Beuningen: ostentatious  example of conspicuous consumption

Three days, three art galleries in the Netherlands. The impression from two out of three of them was excellent; one was very disappointing.

The Hague Kunstmuseum, courtyard and cafe

First, the successes. The Kunstmuseum in The Hague was a revelation: a glorious 1930s design by H P Berlage. Having visited The Hague a couple of times before, I am astonished that I didn’t see this gallery, but perhaps it has something to do with the museum’s title: until 2019 it was called the “Gemeentemuseum”, which doesn’t convey (to me) what the museum actually is: a collection of art. It is a joy to wander round this purpose-built gallery, with concealed ceiling lights and tile decorations throughout. Although the museum is vast, there are small, intimate exhibition spaces as well. The exhibition we saw (Josef and Anni Albers) was well presented, and the café (located in courtyard, formerly open to the elements, now enclosed) was a dream.

The Museum de Lakenhal (that is, “cloth museum”  in Leiden was another great success. Here was the best kind of local collection, a museum that showed artists with a connection to Leiden, but most of all to show the history of the cloth industry in Leiden. Where better than the building where the cloth was authenticated as genuine before being sold? Paintings took up less than half the exhibition space; the rest of the vast building showed cloth-making details, something about the siege of Leiden, and some fascinating early 20th-century art. This museum had been closed for some years for refurbishment; it was worth the wait.  

It is a good idea that art galleries are periodically refurbished; but what do you do with a museum during the building works? The Rotterdam Boijmans Van Beuningen museum is an example of how not to do it. Alongside the main building is a highly impressive egg-shaped building covered in reflective mirroring. This building, the Depot, we are told, is the future of museums. For the first time ever, the museum store was being opened to the public. This store, comprising five floors, with a restaurant at the top and a roof garden above, is big enough, we are told, to hold all the museum’s artworks – no fewer than 151,000 objects. For 20 Euros, we can buy a ticket to see the store. But what do we see? There are precisely 14 pictures on display with captions. To view these, you queue and are admitted a few at a time to the single room with these works on display.

This room has the 14 paintings on display from the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (not, admittedly, just from the back, but if the pictures were against the wall, you could show more).

I quite understand why museums need to close. But to charge €20 to see 14 paintings seems to me a not very fair transaction. Almost alongside this room, which had a queue of visitors waiting patiently for admission, there was a much larger room that was completely empty. It would have been possible to show not 14 but 140 paintings on the walls of this room, complete with captions. Why was this not done?

To be fair, the museum website states quite clearly that the highlights are just 14 pictures. But there is no explanation why only 14 are shown. Worse, an accompanying wall display explains that the presentation of just 14 paintings was “made possible” by a sponsor. Is the display of works of art not what a gallery is for? Does it require a sponsor to show 14 works? 

The astonishing explanation for the 14 paintings that were on display

Had the museum not used “crystal easels”, many more paintings could have been displayed in the one room. On another floor, there was a vast empty room, which could have held, in my estimate, ten times as many paintings. In other words, it was clearly not lack of space to display the pictures. The impression overall of the depot was that space was not at a premium; there was a vast atrium through the centre of the building. No expense had been spared in building the depot.

What made things worse was that dotted around the store were many objects that had been clearly put on display, but without any information about the object. There was a complete lack of the kind of information I would expect from a gallery – who created this artwork? When was it done? – and instead, a smug presentation that made it clear that the museum knows what it is doing, even when it doesn’t. 

Objects displayed to demonstrate the museum's display skills, but not, it seems to tell us anything about what they are

To give a further example. One of the multimedia displays comprised several large numbers, which on closer examination were totals from a search of the  collection’s digital catalogue. By interrogating the catalogue, the display proudly told us, we can see how many objects in the collection have no image. Or have no metadata. In other words, the online catalogue is not complete – yet this is presented as a kind of achievement, rather than a failure. 

Similarly, the museum had a room dedicated to a project based around slavery. This comprised one picture, of a 19th century sugar plantation in Brazil, that had been annotated, like this:

This is an example of labour, just in case you hadn't noticed

There were similar captions for “slavery”. The aim seemed to emphasise to the visitor that the museum was fully aware of the issues raised by some of its collection, and had taken action. Now we all know this represents labour, so there is nothing more to worry about.

In summary, I would give The Hague Kunstmuseum and De Lakenhal 10/10; The Rotterdam Boijmans van Beuningen, 0/10, for a patronizing and unwelcoming attitude to its visitors.