Having invested 45 euros last weekend in our museumkaarts, we set off yesterday to get our money's worth. This would be easier in Amsterdam than in the Hague, but we love a challenge.
The weather, however, did not cooperate: cold, wet, windy, miserable.
Could we burn through 32.50 worth of museum tickets in one afternoon? (The Rijksmuseum last weekend was a whopping 12.50.) Let the countdown begin...
1. The Mauritshuis
The granddaddy of Hague museums, and a gem of a world-class museum at that. This was originally the royal collection and is housed in an elegant 17th-century palace next to the Binnenhof. I appreciate that it is a smaller building -- by "palace," we mean a very nice mansion -- which makes it easier to appreciate the many golden oldies in the collection, like Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring, Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicoleas Tulp, Rubens' and Jan Brueghel the Elder's Garden of Eden, and a small room full of Holbein portraits, which were surprisingly lovely.
I was most taken with Vermeer's View of Delft, which no reproduction prepared me for: in person, it is luminous and has an illusion of elegant precision that disappears on close inspection. Perhaps the crummy weather Vermeer painted makes it hard to reproduce in any way that conveys the beauty and balance of the original; it is also larger than I expected.
Unfortunately, a floor of the Mauritshuis was closed, which meant they were heavily discounting tickets. So that was only 5.25 down: 27.25 euros to go.
2. Prince Willem V Gallery
The oldest public art museum in the Netherlands, this gallery just reopened in its original home in the old town gate on the other side of the Binnenhof. The collection is shared with the Mauritshuis, where all the most important paintings from the original collection are now housed.
They have reconstructed the feel of the original gallery, with paintings jigsawed together to cover every inch of wall space from floor to ceiling -- an impressive experience, but it makes it hard to appreciate the art hung up in the dark recesses of the ceiling. Then again, my experience was marred when I was yelled at by a guard for leaning in too close to a picture.
The adjoining prison/torture musuem provides tours of the less pleasant history of the old gate, but it involved sitting through another hour-long tour in Dutch. Having had that experience (with limited success), we bailed. So only another 5 Euros down.
3. Panorama Mesdag
This was high on my list because of the nonsensical descriptions in the guidebooks: who would pay 6.50 euros (which is like $20 by today's exchange rate) to "stand in the center of this 360-degree painting of nearby Schevningen in the 1880s, with a 3-D, sandy beach foreground"?*
Turns out it's pretty cool. Mesdag was a famous painter of seascapes back in the late 1800s, when panoramas were the most realistic recreations of places and events possible before the advent of the moving picture. The painting of the Hague's beach town suburb fills a giant circular building, the center of which is wonderfully cheesy: you stand on an elevated wooden gazebo in the middle and look out at the painting across a "real" sandy dune, planted cheekily with beach chairs, scraps of nets, sea grass, and other beach refuse.
But what surprised me most was how interesting the rest of the experience was. I really enjoyed the few additional galleries of Mesdag's paintings and other artwork from the "Hague school." There's also a little cafe under the gazebo where you can peek behind the curtain, so to speak, at the structural supports for the panorma and watch a 20-minute video on its creation and on the painstaking 10-year renovation in the 1990s.
Worth 6.50? Mmmm, maybe on a day with a 50% discount. But at least it takes us down to 15.75...
* Rick Steves' Amsterdam, Bruges & Brussels
4. Museum Meermanno/Huis von het boek (House of the Book)
How to explain the book museum? It is based around the idiosyncratic collecting obsessions of the Baron van Westreenen, in whose 18th century mansion the musem is housed. So there are illuminated medieval manuscripts galore and limited edition books that are themselves pieces of art, but also Greek and Egyptian antiquities (including a mummified cat), the Baron's coin collection, some religious icons from the Middle Ages, displays on fonts and type setting, and two gardens -- one a classical pleasure garden, the other full of giant letters.
Lyza would love it here, but by this point in the cold, wet afternoon, it was all a little too surreal for us...
Ticket: 4 Euros.
Final Tally:
5 hours of museum-ing later, and we still had 11.75 Euros to go {{wah wah waaaaaah}}.
To be continued?
The weather, however, did not cooperate: cold, wet, windy, miserable.
 |
| Cold, wet, and miserable in the Binnenhof courtyard |
1. The Mauritshuis
The granddaddy of Hague museums, and a gem of a world-class museum at that. This was originally the royal collection and is housed in an elegant 17th-century palace next to the Binnenhof. I appreciate that it is a smaller building -- by "palace," we mean a very nice mansion -- which makes it easier to appreciate the many golden oldies in the collection, like Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring, Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicoleas Tulp, Rubens' and Jan Brueghel the Elder's Garden of Eden, and a small room full of Holbein portraits, which were surprisingly lovely.
 |
| From www.ibiblio.org |
I was most taken with Vermeer's View of Delft, which no reproduction prepared me for: in person, it is luminous and has an illusion of elegant precision that disappears on close inspection. Perhaps the crummy weather Vermeer painted makes it hard to reproduce in any way that conveys the beauty and balance of the original; it is also larger than I expected.
Unfortunately, a floor of the Mauritshuis was closed, which meant they were heavily discounting tickets. So that was only 5.25 down: 27.25 euros to go.
2. Prince Willem V Gallery
The oldest public art museum in the Netherlands, this gallery just reopened in its original home in the old town gate on the other side of the Binnenhof. The collection is shared with the Mauritshuis, where all the most important paintings from the original collection are now housed.
They have reconstructed the feel of the original gallery, with paintings jigsawed together to cover every inch of wall space from floor to ceiling -- an impressive experience, but it makes it hard to appreciate the art hung up in the dark recesses of the ceiling. Then again, my experience was marred when I was yelled at by a guard for leaning in too close to a picture.
The adjoining prison/torture musuem provides tours of the less pleasant history of the old gate, but it involved sitting through another hour-long tour in Dutch. Having had that experience (with limited success), we bailed. So only another 5 Euros down.
3. Panorama Mesdag
This was high on my list because of the nonsensical descriptions in the guidebooks: who would pay 6.50 euros (which is like $20 by today's exchange rate) to "stand in the center of this 360-degree painting of nearby Schevningen in the 1880s, with a 3-D, sandy beach foreground"?*
 |
| A wide-angle view of the panorama (from the web) |
 |
| The panorama from the outside, to give a sense of scale |
Worth 6.50? Mmmm, maybe on a day with a 50% discount. But at least it takes us down to 15.75...
* Rick Steves' Amsterdam, Bruges & Brussels
4. Museum Meermanno/Huis von het boek (House of the Book)
How to explain the book museum? It is based around the idiosyncratic collecting obsessions of the Baron van Westreenen, in whose 18th century mansion the musem is housed. So there are illuminated medieval manuscripts galore and limited edition books that are themselves pieces of art, but also Greek and Egyptian antiquities (including a mummified cat), the Baron's coin collection, some religious icons from the Middle Ages, displays on fonts and type setting, and two gardens -- one a classical pleasure garden, the other full of giant letters.
 |
| The letter garden at the House of the Book |
Lyza would love it here, but by this point in the cold, wet afternoon, it was all a little too surreal for us...
Ticket: 4 Euros.
Final Tally:
5 hours of museum-ing later, and we still had 11.75 Euros to go {{wah wah waaaaaah}}.
To be continued?
Hi Maggie, loving your posts. Link in item 2 doesn't work ;'(
ReplyDeleteLove, Catherine
Fixed! Thanks for the heads up.
ReplyDelete