Our Editor Tours The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and Its Renowned Vast Collection

Written by Carmen Helford Tuesday, 22 November 2011 21:52

The Municipal Museum (Dutch: Gemeentemuseum Den Haag) is an art museum, located in The Hague, Netherlands. The museum was built by the Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage (1856-1934) . It is renowned for its large Piet Mondrian collection, the largest in the world. His last work, Victory Boogie-Woogie, along with his earlier paintings and drawings are on display at the museum. There is a modern art collection which provides a varied overview of developments in the fine arts since the early 19th century. In the Modern Art Department’s print room you will find a large collection of drawings, prints and posters dating from the 19th and 20th century.The Gemeentemuseum also possesses one of the world's leading collections of fashion items. It includes both historical costumes and contemporary designs. The present-day music collection includes an extensive collection of instruments, illustrative visual materials and a splendid music library, which together document the history of (mainly European) music."GemAc" is a space for the development of arts and political awareness, set up within the Free Academy of The Hague in a cooperative venture with the Gemeente Museum (Municipal Museum of The Hague). GemAc offers contemporary artists, intellectuals and journalists the opportunity to embark on large-scale experimental projects using the workshops, the trainees and the exhibition space of the Free Academy and the professional support and network of the GemeenteMuseum. The organisation of GemAc is part of the GemeenteMuseum. The Modern Art Department’s print room has a large collection of drawings, prints and posters dating from the 19th and 20th century. Most are by Dutch artists, but there are also major groups of foreign works. These include a fine collection of 19th-century French graphic art with an emphasis on work by Bresdin, Redon and Lautrec. German Expressionism is also well represented. The entire collection numbers around 50,000+ items. Parts of it are regularly on show in the print room. The Gemeentemuseum possesses one of the world's leading collections of fashion items. It includes both historical costumes and contemporary designs. Exhibitions focus not just on changing fashions in the Netherlands, but also on landmark designs from abroad. Accessories, jewellery, fashion drawings and prints all help to place the garments in a broader perspective. The present-day music collection includes an extensive collection of instruments, illustrative visual materials and a splendid music library, which together document the history of (mainly European) music. Finally, the music archives (in the KoninklijkeBibliotheek) contain countless manuscripts by Dutch composers. Visit website at : www.gemeentemuseum.nl/

In his design for the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Berlage reserved a important place for a handful of historic interiors. They still provide a place in which to exhibit examples of the applied arts in the kind of setting for which they were originally made. The complex of historic interiors includes a set of rooms representing different periods and a covered courtyard. Most of the interiors were salvaged from houses which were being demolished. The walls, chimneypieces and ceilings were reconstructed inside the museum, sometimes with the addition of stylistically appropriate components brought from elsewhere. Berlage solved the problem of the difference in ceiling height between the historic room interiors and the museum by lowering the floor of this section of the museum and providing access to it down an antique staircase. The gilt leather room (circa 1680). The first of the historic interiors was reconstructed using components from two different houses in The Hague. The staircase with its richly carved handrails, balustrade and fanlight was once part of a house facing onto the Buitenhof. The woodcarving is attributed to Hague sculptor Johannes Sonnemans and dates from around 1697. The chimneypiece and ceiling came from a house on the Groenmarkt. The paintings, by a Hague artist called Theodorus van der Schuer, represent scenes from the life of the mythological hero Hercules. The overmantel painting is signed and dated 1680. Gilt leather wall coverings were very common at this period: the sheets of embossed calfskin probably came from a house in Amsterdam. The Gobelin Room - Until 1931, this was the principal reception room of a house (at no. 143) on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. The interior was transferred to the Gemeentemuseum in its entirety, including the monumental chimneypiece, mirrors, console table and panelling. It is a splendid example of an interior from the period around 1710. The painted ceiling suggests a cupola with a glimpse of open sky and the hovering Roman goddesses of wisdom (Minerva) and justice (Justitia). The walls are decorated with tapestry hangings woven by Alexander Baert of Oudenaarde. They feature a fantasy wooded landscape, predominantly in shades of green, and are of the kind sometimes called ‘verdures’. The distant views of buildings and water are typical, as are the exotic birds flitting between the trees. The covered courtyard provides daylighting for the last of the historic interiors: the Louis XVI room. The walls incorporate eighteenth-century stucco reliefs brought from the same house on the Westeinde that was the source of the Louis XV room. The rectangular reliefs represent the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. The circular ones show Apollo as the god of music and his twin sister Diana as the goddess of the chase. The heavy door decorated with rococo carving dating from around 1760 came from a house in Haarlem. The delicate wrought iron railing (dating from the third quarter of the eighteenth century) was probably once part of a staircase. The courtyard accommodates a number of statues.

The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag has acquired Louise Bourgeois’ penetrating Cell XXVI (2003): a contemporary masterpiece by an internationally renowned artist. While it is not unusual for Dutch museums to purchase major works by earlier artists, from Rembrandt to Manet, acquisitions of contemporary works of this stature have been few and far between over the last twenty years. This move is therefore not only a notable feat on the part of the Gemeentemuseum, but also a rarity in the context of the entire Dutch art world. Benno Tempel, Director of the Gemeentemuseum, is delighted with the acquisition, which was achieved via Cheim & Reid with the advice of Jorg Grimm of Grimm Gallery (Amsterdam) and funded via contributions from BankGiro Lottery, the Mondriaan Stichting, Vereniging Rembrandt, VSB Fonds, SNS Reaal Fonds and the Friends of the Gemeentemuseum. Cell XXVI will feature in the exhibition Hans Bellmer – Louise Bourgeois Double Sexus, which opens at the Gemeentemuseum on exhibition through 16 January 2011. Louise Bourgeois died on 29 May of 2010. It was in 1986 that she began to make what she called her ‘Cells’, installations which form the most important section of her late oeuvre. They bring together many aspects of her earlier work: the human body, sexual ambiguity and the search for personal identity. The Cell acquired by the museum consists of an oval cage constructed of steel trellis-work. Inside the cage is a large standing mirror, a suspended human figure made of textile and two delicate hanging dresses. The nature of the Cell is ambiguous: on the one hand, it is a place of refuge from the outside world; on the other, it has associations with imprisonment. At another level, the Cell plays with voyeurism: the tension between looking and being looked at. The mirror involves the viewer, whose eye is drawn in and allowed to see corners that would otherwise remain hidden. The trellis-work, on the other hand, distances the viewer from what is inside the Cell. The effect of gazing through the trellis is hallucinatory, making the viewer feel slightly off-balance. The resulting sense of physical unease is an important feature of this Cell because it creates a real relationship between the viewer and the work.