Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999 bron Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999. Waanders, Zwolle 1999 Zie voor verantwoording: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_van012199901_01/colofon.php © 2012 dbnl / Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh 7 Director's foreword On 23 June 1999 the new exhibition wing and renovated existing building of the Van Gogh Museum were opened in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix. This was a momentous occasion, marking the beginning of a new phase in our history. From its origins as a showcase for the collections that had been cared for by the artist's family, the Van Gogh Museum has developed into one of the most popular museums in Europe. Over the years, the museum's ambitions have expanded in numerous ways: the collection has been broadened to encompass a wide range of paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints from the period c. 1840-1920, forming a crucial link between the collections of our neighbours the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum; changing exhibitions have become an essential complement to the permanent displays; new activities have been added and more emphasis is now placed on education and making the collection accessible to a broad public. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s these ambitions placed increasing pressures on the original building designed by Gerrit Rietveld and his partners, and the need for extra space was urgent. This need was met by an extraordinarily generous donation from the private sector. The Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Company Ltd. provided, via The Japan Foundation, the funds which enabled the museum to create a new building to house its temporary exhibitions. This spectacular addition was designed by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. The interiors are intended to be furnished in countless different ways for the changing shows, but the museum did not want neutral and characterless rooms. Kurokawa's architecture, with its fluid forms and breathtaking spaces provides a dramatic setting for our varied programme of exhibitions. While the new wing was under construction the museum also carried out a major renovation of the Rietveld building, under the auspices of the Rijksgebouwendienst (Government Buildings Agency). Numerous improvements have been made to the fabric and layout of the building, while virtually all the facilities - from the cafeteria to the auditorium - have been upgraded. The permanent collection now occupies the entire Rietveld building in a new presentation which emphasises both the depth of our holdings of Van Gogh and the breadth of our collection of other nineteenth-century artists. As documented in this volume of the Journal, the new displays contain numerous new loans and acquisitions. Especially pleasing is the addition of a major work by Kees van Dongen, the first in the collection, purchased with funds provided by the Great Sponsor Lottery. Although Van Gogh remains at the heart of our presentations and research, the museum aims to provide a rich overview of many diverse and sometimes contrasting trends in 19th-century art. The Van Gogh Museum Journal is part of that effort. As well as reporting on our activities over the past year and cataloguing the latest acquisitions, the Journal is intended as a vehicle for scholarly research ranging across our area of interest. I would like to thank all the authors for their distinguished contributions. I am especially grateful to Rachel Esner for her skilful editing and management of this publication, and to Benno Tempel and Sjraar van Heugten who assisted her in this task. As before, we have included articles by outside scholars. This publication is the only one of its kind devoted to object-based research on the 19th century, and its continued vitality depends on the participation and support of Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999 the wider scholarly community. Your comments, feedback and proposals for new articles are warmly welcomed. John Leighton Director Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999 8 fig. 1 The exhibition wing of the Van Gogh Museum, spring 1999 Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999 9 Review August 1998 - July 1999 The new wing In recent years the activities of the museum's staff have been dominated by building projects. The creation of a new wing for exhibitions was in itself an ambitious undertaking, but this was carried out in parallel with a major renovation of the existing facility. On 1 September 1998 the museum closed to the public in order to facilitate both construction and renovation. With the successful completion of this work, the museum has virtually doubled in size, and it is no exaggeration to state that, 26 years after it first opened, a new Van Gogh Museum has been created. In 1991, the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Company Ltd agreed to donate, via the Japan Foundation, a sum of 37.5 million Dutch guilders to finance the construction of a new building for temporary exhibitions. The internationally acclaimed architect Kisho Kurokawa received the commission for its design, and his first plans were revealed to the public in the same year. However, the location - behind the existing building in the Museumplein - was a sensitive one. The process of obtaining approval to add a new landmark to this historically important space took many years and construction work did not begin until early in 1997. From an early stage it was decided that the new wing should be an independent structure with its own architectural identity, rather than an extension to the existing building. Kurokawa's original idea for a circular pavilion was modified into an elegant oval form in order to accommodate the demands of the new layout of the Museumplein, developed by the Danish landscape architect Sven-Ingvar Andersson. In its final form, almost two-thirds of the building is set beneath ground level. Access to the wing is from the ground floor of the Rietveld building. An escalator (or a panoramic lift) takes visitors down to the basement level where a broad, crescent-shaped corridor skirts a shallow, Japanese-style pool and leads to the exhibition rooms. The thin layer of moving water in the pond reflects the titanium facade, which is pierced by a projecting cuboid print room clad in aluminium. Other parts of the exterior are constructed in deer-brown granite, quarried in Canada and tooled in Italy. The materials are modern fig. 2 Cross section of the Rietveld building and the exhibition wing Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999 10 fig. 3 Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands with Head of Exhibitions Andreas Blühm at the official opening on 23 June 1999 fig. 4 Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands with Kisho Kurokawa and Director John Leighton at the official opening on 23 June 1999 and hard-edged yet take on surprisingly subtle and varied reflections and colours in the everchanging conditions of light and weather. The interiors are equally dramatic. In addition to service and storage areas, there are three floors offering some 2,293 cubic metres of exhibition space - ample room for the museum's ambitious programme of temporary shows. All the spaces, with the exception of the ‘print box,’ can be illuminated with daylight, but there is also a sophisticated artificial lighting system designed by Georges Berne of L'Observatoire. The first exhibitions have demonstrated the flexibility of these new spaces. Both the modernistic retrospective of Kurokawa's own career and the more traditional presentation of the Theo van Gogh exhibition seemed equally at home in the same building. Kurokawa's design was enthusiastically received by the press here in the Netherlands and abroad. The architect has been praised for creating a highly-original building, yet one that manages to pay homage to some of the best features of its counterpart designed by Gerrit Rietveld and his partners. The renovation of the Rietveld building The other main project of the period under review was the renovation of the Rietveld building, carried out under the auspices of the Rijksgebouwendienst (Government Buildings Agency) and supervised by architect Martien van Goor of the Greiner van Goor partnership. Some of the changes are not readily apparent. For example, numerous improvements have been made to the fabric of the building and the worn-out installations for climate control have been replaced. More obvious is the new layout of the entrance area, which now has a spacious lobby to help improve the flow of Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999 visitors in and out of the building. The cafeteria, the auditorium and shop have all been renovated, and a new office block has been added at the rear of the building. All the interiors have been upgraded from floor to ceiling. Particular attention has been paid to the lighting of works of art. With Van Gogh's sun-filled paintings in mind, the original building was created to allow the influx of natural light into the exhibition spaces. Unfortunately, this generous allowance of daylight was often at odds with modern standards of conservation, and over the years there have been successive attempts to create a satisfactory lighting system in the Rietveld building. Under the guidance of Georges Berne, a new solution to this problem was developed, combining the lively ambience of natural, changing daylight with a supplementary artificial lighting system of the highest quality. Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999 11 There is broad consensus that architect Martien van Goor has struck a successful balance between the essential qualities of Rietveld's design and the demands of a modern museum. To quote the critic of the Volkskrant: ‘It has become a more comfortable museum, an airy building with pleasant rooms filled with daylight. More than ever, Van Gogh's works come into their own.’ The collection during the closure During the closure of the museum the entire collection was moved to locations in the Netherlands and abroad.