News — Aug 12, 2008

Stedelijk Museum to be the guest of the Nieuwe Kerk and the Van Gogh Museum

In the run-up to the reopening of the Stedelijk Museum, the Nieuwe Kerk and the Van Gogh Museum have invited the Stedelijk Museum to enable the public to continue to see its collection by means of two large exhibitions. The first begins in December of this year. 

From 1 October 2008 the Stedelijk Museum will leave its present location in the Post CS building. It is scheduled to open its new premises on the Museumplein at the end of 2009. In the meanwhile its collection will be seen in several museums in Amsterdam. The Nieuwe Kerk has invited the Stedelijk Museum to show over 100 highlights from its collection on the Dam from 13 December 2008 to 19 April 2009 during the exhibition ‘Holy Inspiration. Religion and spirituality in modern art’. 

World religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, are the subject of sometimes fierce debate at all levels of the global community. Religion is accordingly once more at the centre of public discussion. The exhibition Holy Inspiration reflects this situation. Outstanding works from the Stedelijk collection will show how diverse religious experience among modern artists has been and still is. Many of the works displayed by artists like Mondrian, Malevich, Chagall, Schnabel, Barnett Newman, Rothko, Bacon, Gilbert & George, Mike Kelley and Marlene Dumas have not been seen for years and now remind us of the extraordinary breadth of the collection. Other works have hung for years in the museum’s permanent display, but now take on a different dimension in the context of the Nieuwe Kerk. 

After this exhibition the Stedelijk Museum collection will be the guest of the Van Gogh Museum in the summer of 2009. In the run-up to the reopening of the Stedelijk Museum, the Van Gogh Museum will stage the exhibition ‘Avant-gardes '20/'60. Highlights from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum’ from 26 June to 23 August 2009. This features works by artists such as  Mondrian, Malevich, Picasso, De Kooning and Warhol. The exhibition tells the story of art during the most turbulent decades of the 20th century; it will be held in the exhibition wing of the Van Gogh Museum.