Visiting Amsterdam Museums |
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| Amsterdam’s most important museum by my opinion is the Ann Frank House. Located just west of the Dam Square, the house here is where Ann Frank and her family, along with another family and family friend hid from the Nazis for nearly two years. After Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Jews began to be persecuted by being segregated into Jewish only schools, having their businesses taken from them, and other losses. Eventually Ann Frank’s father Otto made the decision to go into hiding. He had transferred some of his businesses over to trusted Dutch citizens in order to prevent them from being forcibly taken away. Some of his most trusted employees would hide him in the annex and provide them food and water indefinitely until the Netherlands were liberated. I’ve known the Ann Frank story after learning it in middle school, but to actually be in the house and imagine the fear and anxiety is a completely different matter. Two years cramped in a small secret section of a house while hearing Nazi troops and military convoys outside for years is psychological terror. Above is a picture of the home sitting on the left, and on the right a normal hallway that was right in front of the annex. |
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| The psychological terror changed to real terror after nearly two years of hiding. Acting on a tip from an unknown informer, on August 4th 1944 the German police raided the house and annex and arrested the two families and the family friend living in the annex. The families were taken to Auschwitz in early September along with over 1,000 other people. About 500 were immediately sent to die in the gas chambers, while the remaining were sent to hard labor. Ann and her sister survived for over six months in the camps. In April 1945 British troops liberated the Auschwitz, but Ann Frank and her sister had just died the month prior, likely from the harsh conditions and diseases. Out of the Frank family, only her father survived the concentration camps. Above on the left is a reconstructed book case that had served as the secret door to the annex, on the right is a photo of Ann Frank from happier times in 1942. |
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| Moving on to some lighter topics, the Rijksmuseum is one of Amsterdam’s most famous covering art and artifacts from the modern era back to the middle ages. The I am Amsterdam sign infront of the Rijksmuseum is one of the most famous icons of the country. This museum is one of the largest I’ve ever been in. Above is the entrance on the left, and on the right one of the main hallways inside. This museums is split up into different eras on each floor. |
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| The museum’s paintings all tell a history lesson about Dutch heritage. Above on the right is a large painting of the first “King of the Holland”, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. His older brother Napoléon, emperor of France, sent him to Holland to look over the country in his interests. Instead the younger Napoléon Bonaparte had his own ambitious. He declared himself King and almost immediately began to isolate the country from French influence and rule. Since Napoléon had expected the Netherlands to be under his full control, this led to tension that finally escalated with Napoléon invading the Netherlands and sending his younger brother into exile. The painting above is the |
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| Obviously without digital media from hundreds of years ago, the only way we can see what things truly looked like centuries before is from paintings from that era. It’s one thing for someone today to research and attempt to depict how people may have dressed or lived, but to me a painting from that time is almost a photograph. Above is a Dutch family on the left and the Amsterdam Spinhuis on the right. The men on the right were responsible for the female prison system and the painting was created in 1669. |
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| The Rijksmuseum of course goes beyond paintings and has lots of other forms of art and artifacts. Above is a photo of a section of a large dollhouse. This dollhouse is called the Petronella Dunois and was created in 1676. The room you see on the left is one of five that made up the house. On the right is the Virgin & Child that was created way back in the early 1500s and was commissioned by Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands. |
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| One of my favorite sections was the models of colonial Dutch ships. These photos above were taken from different parts of the museum and show various ships from the colonial times. Below you can see a painting of the Battle of Terheide created by Willem Van De Velde I in 1657. Anglo-Dutch war that occurred in 1653. I remember visiting the “Dutch House” in Delware USA, where a home was created by a Dutch citizen around this same year. It’s hard to imagine this nation had Dutch citizens in what’s now the United States at the same time these wars were going on. Even farther back than the 17th century is this shield on the lower right. It was believed to have been created sometime in the 1400s from the medieval times. |
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| The museum also has a large modern area that goes from the 1900s to the present. Some of the work included paintings and art from Dutch schools. Others like the photo on the upper left show Amsterdam in the mid 20th century. The clothing on the right was worn by Dutch citizens from the late 1800s and early 1900s. |
  The most famous museum dedicated to an artist is the Van Gogh museum. This large museum has several floors of his artwork as well as art from his peers and other artists that influenced him. Van Gogh is famous for his ability to romanticize his mental demons and anxieties through his paintings. He painted for only about 10 years until it was believed that he committed suicide. On the left is Van Gogh’s last self portrait that was created in 1888, two years before he lost his life. On the right is one of his early paintings. He began at first with landscapes and often used very dark colors. Below are two photos of the inside just to give you an idea of how large this place is. |
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| In addition to landscapes, Van Gogh also did quite a number of paintings on weavings and this one above from a mining town in Belgium. The painting on the right was criticized for not being proportional or natural, and is used to show mistakes he made when he was still an amateur. Van Gogh was not a natural born artist, but spent lots of time and effort developing his skills. He especially had troubles with proportions and creating the illusions of depth in his early work. |
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| These final four pictures are from city parks and the flowers in the vase below. I had mostly wanted to see the famous painting, the Starry Night, but this is actually in the New York Museum of Modern Art. Below on the lower right is a close up of the flower photo, showing some detail of his brush strokes. |
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| The last museum I have to share is the torture museum. I wasn’t sure if I should go in here or not, but since I had passed by it anyway I gave it a shot. As someone who hates the concept of torture, I have to say the museum is obviously not an uplifting place, but at the same time it’s no where near as bad as I would have expected. Above is the entrance and a the main hallway of the museum. They give a history of many different countries and their methods of torture, as well as have dozens of devices on display such as the Inquisitional Chair and the Iron Maiden below. Surprisingly, I learned here that it is now the belief that the dark ages weren’t so dark after all. That while lots of horrible things certainly happened, gruesome torture was generally reserved for the worst of the worst. Even then,, they mentioned how kings and leaders were well aware that anything too extreme would go beyond justice in the eyes of their citizens. |
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