Stedelijk Museum Annual Report 2012

Exhibitions
Overview
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is the largest museum of modern and
contemporary art and design in the Netherlands. With the renovation of its historic
Neo-Renaissance building dating from 1895 and the addition of the new wing on
Museumplein, the museum now has more space than ever to present iconic works
from the collection. For the first time, the important design collection occupies a
prominent place in the permanent display.
Upon the reopening, half of the ground floor of the historic 1895 building was
dedicated to an installation of visual art from 1860 to 1960. Among the highlights
are key works in the oeuvres of Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Chaïm Soutine, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Piet
Mondriaan, Theo van Doesburg, Kazimir Malevich, Charley Toorop, Max
Beckmann, Jackson Pollock, Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, and other artists of the
CoBrA group. The two galleries at the center of the ring will host temporary
presentations of works on paper and photography in the collection.
Since the reopening, the other half of the ground-floor ring has been devoted to an
impressive overview of the design collection, with pieces from 1900 to the present.
Furniture, glass, ceramics, jewelry, posters, graphic design, and textiles are
arranged thematically. The installation presents work by major designers such as H.
P. Berlage, Josef Hoffmann, Piet Zwart, Tapio Wirkkala, Ettore Sottsass, and Sheila
Hicks. The circuit also includes key examples of De Stijl, notable among them the
fully-restored Harrenstein Bedroom (1926) by Gerrit Rietveld—one of the few
surviving De Stijl interiors. The Stedelijk’s own influence on graphic design was
explored through the work of former Stedelijk director Willem Sandberg and Wim
Crouwel, both long-standing graphic designers at the Stedelijk.
The second floor of the 1895 building features important art from the 1960s to the
present. Selections include signature works such as La perruche et la sirène by
Henri Matisse, The Beanery by Edward Kienholz, and Bellevue II by Andy Warhol—
as well as monographic rooms devoted to the work of Willem de Kooning, Barnett
Newman, and Hanne Darboven, among others. The first collection presentation also
included works by artists such as Jo Baer, Lee Bontecou, Jan Dibbets, Rineke
Dijkstra, Marlene Dumas, Ger van Elk, Isa Genzken, Gilbert & George, Ellsworth
Kelly, Yves Klein, Martin Kippenberger, Joseph Kosuth, Piero Manzoni, Brice
Marden, Cady Noland, Bruce Nauman, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Rauschenberg,
and Richard Serra, in conjunction with recent aquisitions of work by Stanley
Brouwn, Bruce Conner, Simone Forti, Richard Hawkins, Paulina Olowska, Martha
Rosler, Wolfgang Tillmans, Danh Vo, Guido van der Werve, and others.
In the new building, the inaugural temporary exhibition Beyond Imagination
reaffirmed the return of the Stedelijk as the focus of Amsterdam’s contemporary art
scene and paid tribute to the art created in Amsterdam and the Netherlands. For the
exhibition, Stedelijk curator Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen and guest curator Kathrin
Jentjens, former director of the Kölnischer Kunstverein, invited artists to consider
how boundaries are blurred between reality and imagination, authenticity and roleplaying,
especially in relation to developments in fields such as politics, finance, and
the media.
A record 657 artists proposed responses to this theme. A jury comprising
the curators and three other arts professionals—Frédérique Bergholtz, Koen Brams,
and Melvin Moti—made the final selection of 20 artists. In the tradition of the
Proposal for Municipal Art Acquisitions (Gemeentelijke Kunstaankopen) the
exhibition presented today’s Dutch art with an international slant. Beyond
Imagination featured a large number of new projects and commissioned work by
both Dutch and foreign-born artists currently working in the Netherlands. The
7