Stedelijk Museum

Stedelijk is a contemporary art museum in Amsterdam, also called the city museum. Established over 150 years ago, its exhibitions remain popular and interesting for visitors of all ages.

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General information

The architecture of the building belongs to the Neo-Renaissance style. The facade of the building is decorated with sculptural compositions by Dutch masters Jacob van Kampen and Hendrik de Keyseri. The walls are built in the “bacon” technique of alternating strips of white and red bricks. This was a common technique used to build houses in Holland in the 15th century. The museum is decorated with two small towers.

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The Stedelek Museum presents all known trends of modern art. Here you can see paintings by such masters as Picasso, Cézanne, Matisse, Judd, De Kowning and Kounellis. In addition, the museum has one of the largest collections of works by Kazemir Malevich.

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In close proximity to the Stedelijk Museum are also the Vincent van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum.

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History

The Stedelek Museum was founded in Amsterdam in 1895 as a museum of the city’s history. The neo-Renaissance building originally displayed furniture, coins, silverware, jewelry and living furnishings from old Amsterdam houses, in addition to a collection of weapons and an exhibition of an old apothecary. In 1920-1940 some of the museum’s funds were transferred to other museum institutions. At the same time a collection of modern Dutch and French art was created. Since 1930, the museum kept an extensive collection of van Gogh’s works, which moved into its own building in 1972. It was not until the early 1970s that the last pieces of the historic residential setting left the museum’s exhibit, and the museum began to serve in a new capacity as Amsterdam’s first museum of modern art.

Now only the walls are left of the interior of the building, painted white to allow visitors to fully experience and immerse themselves in the world of contemporary art without being distracted by other elements of the décor.

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Stedelijk Museum Exhibits

The City Museum presents all known directions of modern art. A huge number of works by masters from different countries, starting from 1850, are collected here. It is impossible to simultaneously show all the treasures of modern art Stedelijk Museum. Accordingly, despite the huge number of halls, the Stedelijk is dominated by temporary expositions that change each other.

The museum staff often changes temporary exhibitions, dedicating them either to the works of certain authors, or to whole directions in art.

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So, the most visited and valuable permanent exhibition of the Stedelijk is the Kazimir Malevich Hall. Everything here is aimed at allowing the viewer to feel and appreciate the power of exactly the color, not the image. As this fact wanted to convey to people the author himself, who wrote the accompanying text for some of his works. Here are works belonging to several styles in which the author worked – this is realism, cubism, suprematism and painting.

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So, Malevich’s hall places 28 paintings and several dozen drawings. They in 1927 the author himself was taken out of Russia and for a long time were in Germany, in the house of the architect H. Hering. It was there that they were found by the director of the Stedelijk, Willem Sandberg. This man in general did a lot for the museum. He selected paintings, drawings, sketches for the museum’s exhibitions, found sponsors and collected donations for the purchase of new exhibits. Under Sunberg, the museum’s collection was greatly expanded.

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The museum’s permanent exhibitions also showcase works by Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Marc Chagall.

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Temporary exhibitions include works by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Wassily Kandinsky, Judd, De Kooning, Kounellis, Jan Schoonhoven, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Antonio Saura, Bart van der Lek, Bram van Velde, and others. Some rooms are dedicated to German Expressionism, American Pop Art, and other art movements.

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The halls of innovative artists are especially popular with museum visitors. There are works by Barnett Newman, which are large monochrome canvases, as well as Kinholtz’s “Diner”, which depicts a traditional Los Angeles bar in three dimensions, with one significant feature: instead of the faces of the visitors, there are clocks… Most of the museum’s exhibits have no explanations, only the title or the author’s name.

Practical information

Mode of operation

The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closing at 10 p.m. on Thursdays.

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Ticket prices

An adult ticket costs 15€ (~765 rubles), a child ticket is free, a student ticket costs 7.5€ (~380 rubles). Museumkaart holders can also visit the museum for free.

On the official website of the museum you can buy an electronic ticket: http://www.stedelijk.nl/etickets. This will save time standing in queues.

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Cafe

The museum has a café where you can have a snack, as well as lunch and a hearty dinner. It is open from 8-30 to 0-00 daily.

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On the way you can stop by the souvenir shop, maybe you’ll come across something interesting.

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How to get there

You can get here by streetcar. Routes #2 – get off at Nieuw Sloten and #5 – get off at Amstelveen Binnenhof. The #170 bus also stops near the museum, get off at Uithoorn. All of the above routes pass through Central Station.

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From Amstel there is streetcar number 12, get off at Museumplein.

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The parking lot closest to the museum is pay parking.

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