Stedelijk Museum Annual Report 2012

Art Handling
For the Art Handling Department, 2012 was all about the transfer of some 2,500
objects from the storage facility to the museum. The department managed
installation of the collection in the historic building, and placed works in the
exhibition spaces of the new building forBeyond Imagination and the collectionbased
presentation Works in Place, followed by the Mike Kelley retrospective.
In preparation for installing the collection, storage managers and curators first
carried out a number of trial presentations in the storage depot. This entailed
moving, setting up, and re-packaging hundreds of objects, chiefly those belonging
to the applied arts collection. The trial displays enabled the curators to refine their
selection of objects for the permanent installation prior to their transfer to the
museum building.
Approximately 133 paintings, 52 sculptures, 68 works on paper, 68 photographic
works, 9 audiovisual works, and 1,534 objects from the applied arts collection were
taken out of storage by the storage management team, packed by the Conservation
Technology Department, and transported to the museum building, where they were
installed by the Art Handling Department.
The objects varied in size and in the number of component parts. The 1965
sculptural installation The Beanery by Edward Kienholz consists of 10 sections,
each in its own crate, but was counted as one object. It is an example of a work that
demands a great deal of time, not only to install, but to prepare for transfer.
Likewise, the preparation and installation of Gerrit Rietveld’s Harrenstein Bedroom
(1926) took almost three weeks.
The installation of The Beanery and the Harrenstein Bedroom was fully documented
with the help of a new photographic and written documentation system. Developed
for the purpose of reconstructing works of this sort, it can be used as a reference
when installing the pieces in future.
A vast number of art handlers, set-builders, and cabinet makers spent four months
preparing and installing exhibitions in the galleries of the new wing, for which 440
running meters of wall space was built, with a total surface area of 1,700 square
meters.
Temporary architecture was designed and constructed for the Mike Kelley
exhibition, which reused approximately 220 meters of wall from the previous
exhibition. The preparations for the exhibition were very intensive for the
Registration Office, which processed the loan of 200 works from 70 lenders. The
Conservation Technology Department drafted packing instructions for each of the
works, and the entire team of art handlers installed the pieces in the gallery space.
Throughout the year, in addition to reinstalling the collection and the temporary
exhibitions, the Storage Department welcomed 63 visitors in the study area of the
storage facility to consult objects from the collection. Another 99 people took part in
12 guided tours of the storage facility. The participants included students from the
Reinwardt Academie, students at the University of Amsterdam, and colleagues from
Norway, Sweden, and Qatar.
With the grand reopening in 2012, the museum observed a freeze on loans.
However, exceptions were made: 25 requests for loans were honored, for which a
total of 64 objects were packed by the Conservation Technology Department. Of
these, 53 loans were returned, representing a total of 139 objects.
A total of 128 gifts and 114 purchases were housed in the storage facility.
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