Andrea U.
Yelp
We purchased timed tickets months in advance. The museum was sold out today, but we still stood online to get inside. We purchased a headset in advance which we appreciated. The headset did not revolve in numerical order. We put our belongings in a complementary locker and followed the crowds up to & through the exhibition. There were school groups, tour groups and just crowds of people, it took a while to get in front to be able to look at the art. We started with a timeline of van Gogh, and then moved through the galleries. The galleries were very very crowded , noisy, hot and smelly. It was tough to enjoy & appreciate the art when seeing paintings that were 10 people deep. We spent 3 hrs exploring the museum, had a cold iced tea in the coffee shop & made a few purchases from the beautiful gift shop. In the restaurant I ordered a hummus plate & my husband a flatbread, prices were reasonable.
This is the most visited museum in the Netherlands. The Potato Eaters, Wheatfield with Crows and, yes, the postcard-perfect Sunflowers series are all among the 200-strong painting collection. But this is more than just a rundown of van Gogh's greatest hits. Drawings & letters dive into the artist's depression (and that ear incident), there's a video installation charting his rise, and works by the first generation of artists to be inspired by him are on view.
This museum is situated at the Museumplein complex & consists of 2 buildings, the Rietveld building with four stories and a café. The Kurokawa wing is a new three-story, oval, the connects through a tunnel.
The Van Gogh Museum has the largest collection of the Dutch post-Impressionist painter's works anywhere in the world. It is also a major research center, constantly making discoveries about his working process and artistic technique. Researchers learned that the red pigment van Gogh used had faded over time, leaving the paintings more blue than he'd originally intended. Imagine what his "Bedroom" in Arles would have looked like if the walls were purple and not blue; or how his blossoming fruit trees might have been pink, rather than white.
We ended at van Gogh's, Almond Blossoms a piece that van Gogh created for the birth of his nephew and namesake. Six months after van Gogh death, his younger brother Theo died. The Museum shared a lot about their relationship and correspondences. Jo, Theo's widow, saved the chest of drawers, where she kept all of their correspondences. Vincent, van Gogh, Jr. was the founder of this museum and dedicated his life to keeping his uncles' works relevant. Two of Vincent's grand nieces live in Amsterdam today. Willem van Gogh's family inherited the artist's priceless collection, including 456 paintings & 650 drawings