Van Gogh Museum

Vincent van Gogh hardly sold a painting while he lived. That is why this museum exists: the pictures nobody bought stayed in his family, and the family kept them together.

When Vincent van Gogh died in 1890, his unsold work went to his brother Theo. Theo died only six months later, and it all passed to Theo’s widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger. She sold some pictures to make the painter known, organised exhibitions, and kept the rest. In 1925 the collection went to her son, who was also called Vincent. For many years he lent it to the Stedelijk Museum next door.

The family worried that one day it would be scattered. In 1962 they reached an agreement with the Dutch state. The whole collection, more than two hundred paintings and about five hundred drawings, with Vincent’s letters, went into a foundation. In return the state undertook to build a museum for it and to keep it open to the public.

The architect was Gerrit Rietveld, a leading member of De Stijl, the group of Dutch artists and architects of the 1920s. He liked geometric shapes and light, open rooms. He drew the building in 1963 and 1964 and died that year, with only a sketch design finished. His partners worked it out, building started in 1969, and the museum opened on 2 June 1973.

The second building, the oval one, is by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa and opened in 1999. It was made possible by donors in Japan. Where Rietveld had drawn a cube, Kurokawa chose an ellipse, and he sank half of it into the ground of the square.

The glass hall between the two came last. It opened in September 2015, and it moved the way in from the street behind to the square in front.