If you’d like to learn more about the Van Gogh Museum’s highlights and general tips for visiting, you’ve come to the right place.
The Van Gogh Museum is one of the top museums in Europe, and it’s usually one of the only reasons people visit Amsterdam for. However, with more than two million visitors every year, preparing for your visit to the Van Gogh Museum is smart. If you’d like to learn more about the Van Gogh Museum’s highlights and general tips for visiting, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to learn more!
Van Gogh Museum’s History
The Van Gogh Museum opened up in 1973. It was designed by a very famous Dutch architect and furniture designer, Gerrit Rietveld. The museum has the most extensive collection of Van Gogh’s works worldwide. A fun fact: the second largest art collection of Van Gogh is also located in the Netherlands, in the Kroller-Muller Museum. After Van Gogh died in 1980, his younger brother and one of his best friends, Theo, inherited his paintings. However, Theo died shortly after, and his widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, took care of the art. She started organizing exhibitions of his work, writing about him in art magazines, and selling his artwork. In the 1920s, she realized it was too good to have his collection together and stopped selling his art. Around 200 paintings and a lot of his drawings that remained in the family collection are currently being displayed in the Van Gogh Museum today.
Highlights of the Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum located in Amsterdam is one of the best places to learn about the life and work of this famous artist. Not only because you can see the majority of his paintings but because they’re also displayed chronologically. So you are able to see the development of his art well and easily follow how fast he changed throughout those ten years.
Van Gogh’s Self Portraits
Although we only have one photo of Van Gogh, we know what he looked like from his many self-portraits. He painted around 35 self-portraits, a lot of which are displayed on the ground floor of the Van Gogh Museum. Many of them aren’t finished since they were only a way to practice for him. So, his plan was not to sell any of them.
Sunflowers Reproduction
There is an exceptional reproduction of the sunflower painting in the museum. It is the only painting you can smell and touch in the museum. Vincent usually used thick paint while working on his art, and that is visible in the Sunflowers. This reproduction was made for people with visual impairments. However, it is also a nice way to feel his art with various senses.
Wheatfield with Crows
Although this wasn’t his last painting, this one greatly symbolized his life’s end. He painted the vast wheat field, where he used to paint over the previous two months before he died. Above it is a dark sky with black crows flying towards it.
These were only a few of the many highlights of the museum. If you are planning a trip to Amsterdam, consider visiting the museum to see so much more!
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