Kunstmuseum Den Haag

The Kunstmuseum Den Haag is an art museum in The Hague, Netherlands, that holds one of the most significant collections of modern and applied arts in the country. Founded on 29 May 1866 as the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, it has undergone several name changes over its long history, operating as Haags Gemeentemuseum until 1998, then as Gemeentemuseum Den Haag until September 2019, when it adopted its current name. The museum's collection of approximately 165,000 works spans many different forms of art, and its holdings of Piet Mondrian's work constitute the largest Mondrian collection in the world. The institution occupies a landmark building designed by Dutch architect H.P. Berlage, constructed between 1931 and 1935, which has shaped its identity as both a cultural repository and an architectural destination.

The museum's origins lie in the Vereeniging tot het oprigten van een Museum van Moderne Kunst, established in 1866 by a group of notables and artists including Hague politician Hugo Ferdinand baron van Zuylen van Nijevelt, Mauritshuis director Jean Zacharie Mazel, artists David Bles, Louwrens Hanedoes, and Carel Vosmaer, architect Henri Camp, former minister Agnites Vrolik, and Hendrik Steengracht van Oosterland, grand master to King Willem III. Later board members included artists Philip Sadée, Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Jacob Maris, Salomon Verveer, and Johannes Stroebel, with princes Frederik and Alexander of the Netherlands among the members. The association began acquiring paintings and used temporary spaces such as the Sint-Sebastiaansdoelen and Panorama Mesdag for exhibitions.

In 1906, municipal archivist Hendrik Enno van Gelder proposed new housing for The Hague's historical collections, and in 1912 he was appointed director of what was then the Haags Gemeentemuseum. Van Gelder envisioned a comprehensive cultural complex encompassing museums for old and modern applied arts, modern Dutch and international art, a large exhibition space, a public reading room, and a conference hall. World War I interrupted these plans from 1914 until 1919, when the municipal government made a vacant site on Stadhouderslaan available.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage was appointed architect and initially designed an ambitious cultural centre with concert and congress halls in collaboration with Van Gelder, but municipal authorities rejected this proposal. The project stalled until 1927, when Berlage submitted a more modest design. Construction began in 1931, and the museum officially opened on 29 May 1935.

The 1963 addition of the Schamhartvleugel, designed by Sjoerd Schamhart and connected to the main building by an aerial bridge, expanded the museum's footprint. A fundamental restoration took place between 1995 and 1998, undertaken by the architectural firm Braaksma en Roos, during which a cellar was installed beneath the courtyard and workshops were created between the museum and the former boiler house. The Schamhart wing was disconnected during this restoration. In 2002, the Fotomuseum Den Haag and GEM (later KM21), a museum for contemporary art, were established within this wing, both organizationally part of the Kunstmuseum though with separate entrances and admission fees.

A major intervention came between late 2013 and early 2014, when the inner courtyard was completely roofed over with glass to create a vast, fully climate-controlled multifunctional space. This new hall entered service during the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit to host press conferences.

The name change from Gemeentemuseum Den Haag to Kunstmuseum Den Haag in October 2019 was motivated by research indicating limited name recognition and international confusion. Director Benno Tempel described the old name as "dusty and regional," though the change generated considerable public and political reaction. In 2024, Margriet Schavemaker succeeded Benno Tempel as director, having taken up her position on 1 June 2024 after Tempel's departure on 1 November 2023.

The Kunstmuseum Den Haag's collection of approximately 165,000 works encompasses modern art, applied arts, fashion, music, and photography, organized across several distinct departments. The modern art collection traces Dutch art from the beginning of the 19th century, complemented by characteristic international examples from the same periods, with particular strength in the Hague School, Symbolism around 1900, artists associated with De Stijl and the Bauhaus, and Expressionism.

The applied arts collection ranks among the museum's most significant holdings, featuring ceramics, glass, silver, and furniture. It includes one of the largest collections of Dutch Delftware in the world, as well as one of the largest collections of Persian ceramics and glass in Europe. The museum also holds early Chinese and Islamic glass, silverwork from The Hague and the Dutch East India Company, and a notable assemblage of Rozenburg porcelain.

The fashion collection, comprising over 40,000 historical and contemporary clothing items, accessories, jewellery, fashion drawings, and prints, originated in 1951 with the private collection of artist Cyrus Voorbergh himself. Due to conservation requirements, these items are displayed only in temporary exhibitions. The collection continues the legacy of the Dutch Costume Museum, which closed in 1985 due to budget cuts.

The music collection encompasses a large holding of musical instruments and a music library with an emphasis on European music, primarily fortepianos, wind and plucked string instruments, alongside instruments from other cultures and contemporary electronic instruments. Prints, posters, drawings, and photographs relating to performance practice supplement these holdings. A significant portion derives from the Scheurleer Music History Museum, which operated from 1905 to 1935 and was purchased after the bankruptcy of Scheurleer & Zoonen in 1932.

The print room contains approximately 50,000 19th- and 20th-century prints, posters, and drawings by Dutch artists including Co Westerik and Jan Toorop, as well as Rodolphe Bresdin, Ingres, Paul Klee, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Odilon Redon. The photography collection, developed from the 1970s onward with classic themes of portraits, still lifes, and landscapes, expanded dramatically after 2002 from 2,000 to 6,000 works through acquisitions of the Zoetendaal, Gerard Fieret, and Frans Zwartjes collections, plus donations from photographers including Dirk de Herder, Wally Elenbaas, Helena van der Kraan, and Fons Brasser.

The museum presents approximately 25 to 30 exhibitions annually. Notable recent exhibitions have included Portuguese painter Paula Rego, Basque fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga, English potter and artist Grayson Perry, and in 2021 the Monet: The Garden Paintings exhibition, which was voted the best museum exhibition in the Netherlands.

The Kunstmuseum Den Haag's most celebrated holding is its Mondrian collection, the largest in the world, comprising nearly 300 paintings from all periods of the artist's career. This collection owes much to the bequest of Dutch art collector Salomon B. Slijper, particularly works from Mondrian's figurative period. The collection's crown jewel is Victory Boogie-Woogie, Mondrian's final, unfinished painting, which was gifted to the museum in 1998 by the Bank of the Netherlands and has been on display there since. The modern art holdings extend well beyond Mondrian to include works by international figures Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele, Frank Stella, Lee Bontecou, Henri Le Fauconnier, and Francis Bacon, alongside Dutch artists Constant, Vincent van Gogh, Johan Jongkind, Pyke Koch, Charley Toorop, and Jan Toorop. The museum's acquisition of a substantial portion of Constant's New Babylon works followed the major retrospective exhibition of 1974. The museum's seven period rooms, or Stilräume, constitute a distinctive presentation format, displaying applied arts in historical interior settings: the Gold-Leather Room (c. 1600), the Gobelin Room (c. 1710), a Louis XV room (c. 1770), the Japan Room (1720-1770), a Louis XVI room (c. 1790), the Disselhof Room (1894-1897), and the Court Room. The Berlage collection merits special attention given the architect's central role in the museum's identity. It includes a model of the Berlage Stock Exchange, numerous furniture pieces (chairs, a carpet, writing desk, work table, display cabinet, drawing cabinet, work desk with office chair, dining room suite, coffee table, wardrobe, side table, chaise longue, two sofas, a hall bench, a dressing table with candlestick, and the sole surviving cabinet from the eight-meter wall unit that won the gold medal at the 1900 Paris World's Fair), a tile stove and fireplace, glass sculptures, vases, carafes, a breakfast service, an annual cup, a drinking cup, ashtrays, a plate, covered dishes, a large beaker glass, two drawings and two pastel drawings, two chandelier fixtures, and two clocks. In November 2010, the museum received two rare Rozenburg vases, 75 cm tall pieces decorated with colourful stylised floral motifs and images of two country houses, commissioned in 1897 as a silver wedding anniversary gift. The Rozenburg pottery in The Hague was among the most famous Dutch potteries around 1900, with architect T.A. Colenbrander having worked there from 1884 to 1889, designing many of the patterns.

The Kunstmuseum Den Haag occupies a purpose-built museum building designed by Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the last major project of his career. Berlage died in 1934, just before its completion, and his son-in-law Emil Emanuel Strasser oversaw the final touches. The building stands in the northwest of the inner city, in the garden-city district of Duinoord near the Peace Palace, at the edge of the Zorgvliet park.

Berlage's design has been described as "the dream museum," with a purpose distinct from contemporary Dutch museums: not a pompous temple of art but a building of simple, sober, and accessible appearance, inviting rather than imposing. This aesthetic choice proved controversial among early critics accustomed to grand classical museum architecture. The use of ordinary yellow bricks rather than opulent materials such as marble and granite drew criticism for lacking majesty, with some comparing the building to a factory or swimming pool, particularly due to the two tall towers at the rear of the complex. The interior, however, won immediate praise, especially the impressive entrance hall with coloured tiles, columns, and halls creating what one newspaper described as a pleasant, calming, and intimate atmosphere.

Despite the building's apparent brick construction, Berlage embraced modern materials: reinforced concrete and iron form the structural core, with the bricks applied as decorative elements around the concrete framework. In a distinctive technical gesture, Berlage stipulated that each layer of bricks must be perpendicular to the level below it, making the wall structurally weaker than conventional parallel layering but emphasising the decorative function of the masonry.

The number 11 governs many architectural elements throughout the building. Most of the four million yellow bricks measure 5.5 cm by 22 cm by 11 cm, and window panes are 44 cm wide.

Director Hendrik Enno van Gelder collaborated closely with Berlage on the design, with one notable point of contention being the gallery lighting source, which Berlage resolved through extensive experimentation and argument into a novel design.

Behind the museum, Berlage designed a garden pavilion that now bears his name and houses a brasserie.

The Kunstmuseum Den Haag is located in The Hague, Netherlands, with its main building on Stadhouderslaan in the Zorgvliet district. The museum is municipally owned and operates as a public cultural institution. Its website is https://www.kunstmuseum.nl. The museum's organizational structure includes two affiliated institutions with separate entrances and admission fees: KM21 (museum for contemporary art, formerly GEM) and the Fotomuseum Den Haag (The Hague Museum for Photography), both housed in the Schamhart wing since 2002. The fully climate-controlled multifunctional space created by roofing over the inner courtyard in 2013-2014 provides additional capacity for events and exhibitions. Visitor statistics reported for the Kunstmuseum exclude KM21 and the Fotomuseum. The museum maintains an active exhibition programme of approximately 25 to 30 exhibitions per year across its various collections and spaces.