Hermitage on the Amstel brings Russia back to Amsterdam
Three centuries after Peter the Great, the Russians are coming to Amsterdam again. On the east bank of the Amstel river, to which Amsterdam owes its name, a dependency of the famous St. Petersburg Hermitage opens this Friday.
The 17th century nursing home Amstelhof has been converted into a modern, light 9000-square-metres museum in the space of two years; it will soon house permanent exhibitions from Russia. The Amsterdam Hermitage can loan anything from the St. Petersburg motherhouse, as long as its shows do not compete with the collections of museums already established in Amsterdam. That means no Rembrandts or other Dutch Masters owned by the Russian state museum will be on display at the Amsterdam Hermitage.
"When the idea started to take shape, I visited my colleagues at the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk [museum for modern art], the Amsterdam Historic museum, the Van Gogh and the maritime museum to explain that we would only host exhibitions that are complementary to what the Dutch museums own," says Ernst Veen, the director of the Hermitage on the Amstel. "But the Hermitage has three million art objects, so there will be plenty to show."
Veen has been the long-time director New Church (Nieuwe Kerk), which is located next to the royal palace on Dam Square and is home to royal ceremonies, famous graves and numerous exhibitions. It was on a visit to Russia in 1991 that he got the idea for the Hermitage dependency in Amsterdam. After years of coaxing Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovky, that dream has now come true.
'Crazy idea'
In 1997, Veen was offered the Amstelhof because it no longer met the requirements of a nursing home. When he showed it to Piotrovky, the Russian immediately agreed, saying it was "a crazy but wonderful idea", Veen recalls.
The last elderly left the building in the spring of 2007, and within 24 months two museum halls were created that should allow 400,000 people to visit each year. The Hermitage on the Amstel also has a 220-seat restaurant, an auditorium, a study centre, a library, an exhibition about the 1681 building itself and an annex with children's exhibitions. The new sliding roof allows Veen to choose whether a display will be in the dark, or in full daylight.
The official opening this Friday - by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev - is right on target. Veen always said he would open the doors before the summer of 2009, and the reconstruction work even stayed within the 42 million euro budget. That makes the museum all the more unique at a time when both the Stedelijk museum and the Rijksmuseum are knee-deep in renovation delays, and the establishment of a national history museum in the town of Arnhem has developed into a full-fledged national political dispute.
Modern cultural entrepreneur
Veen has steered clear of those problems; the Hermitage is not state-subsidised so he relies mostly on private donations. Veen is a modern cultural entrepreneur. In 1998, he used the money from an award for boosting Amsterdam's economic development to fund a feasibility study for the Amsterdam Hermitage. He soon got the Dutch national lottery to commit 31 million euros to the project, and he convinced local, provincial and national authorities to chip in for the rest of the construction budget. The Hermitage on the Amstel will not need state funding for its exploitation. Before the recession, Veen reached long-term funding agreements with Heineken, Fortis Bank and Philips electronics.
Amsterdam is not the first city to host Hermitage-owned exhibitions. The Russian museum has branches in existing museums in London and Las Vegas. And pending the grand opening of the Amsterdam Hermitage, art objects from the Russian Hermitage have already been put on display in the small annex of the Amstelhof. The first large exhibition, which opens to the public on Saturday, is called 'At the Russian Court. Palace and Protocol in the 19th Century'; it displays more than 1,800 objects on loan from the St Petersburg Hermitage.
A permanent exhibition will be dedicated to Dutch-Russian relations through the centuries. Those started when Peter the Great moved to Amsterdam in 1697 to study shipbuilding and to look for inspiration for the building of St Petersburg. Not only did he use Amsterdam as an example for his city, upon his return he also started an art collection that later found a home in the Hermitage.
