A Day At The Museums

Up and at ’em!

I woke up just after 6am, but stayed in bed, thinking I should get up at a more respectable time. So just before 8am, I officially started the day. Hopped the bus to Centraal station, where i purchased the best thing ever.

Introducing the I Amsterdam card.

This card is hella awesome. 30 museums. A free canal cruise. Further discounts and free gifts at retailers. All you can see and do in either 24hrs (€ 38,00), 48hrs (€ 48,00) or 72 hours (€ 58,00). If you book online in June, get a further 10% off.

Plus it covers all your public transportation: trams, buses and subway. A great deal since a one hour bus ticket costs € 2,50.

Going to a few of the big museums already cover your cost. FTW!

So what did i choose to be the first thing I see in Amsterdam? The Rijksmuseum, baby!

Unfortch the neo-gothic Rijksmuseum is still under renovations. It was supposed to be completed by 2010, but now has been pushed back to 2013. (actually, there’s construction and renovations going on everywhere in Amsterdam.)

Only the Philips wing was open to the public. So imagine if you will, in 12 huge rooms, you get a condensed best of the best of the Dutch’s Golden Age – The Masterpieces.

Then keep in mind, that the Rijksmuseum owns a collection of 7M works of art, only a fraction of which is usually on display. The museum also has a new rule: no photography or videography which kinda bites.

I instantly recognized a few pieces that Sean and I saw when the Vancouver Art Gallery held the Vermeer, Rembrandt and Golden Age of Dutch Art Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum exhibit last summer.

There was The Cnoll Family by Jacob Jansz Coeman, Portrait of His Son Titus by Rembrandt, Self Portrait by Rembrandt and The Love Letter by Vermeer.

Vermeer’s The Milkmaid was on display, but his Girl with a Pearl Earring can now be seen at the Mauritius House in the Hague.

If you’re into dollhouses, the Rijksmuseum has the doll house of Petronella Oostman. It’s displayed behind a glass window but there are 2 step ladders which you can climb to see all the details in the 9 miniature rooms. This doll house is like my height, not including the legs it stands on. Barbie’s dream home has nothing on this.

One really neat piece of art is Maartin Bass’ grandfather clock. It’s on the first floor, tucked away in a stairwell corner and when I walked by it, I thought there was really someone standing inside the monolith clock. It’s a real time clock in which a man draws and erases the hands of the clock from inside.

Rijksmuseum’s piece de resistance is of course, Rembrandt’s The Military Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, better known as The Night Watch. I first saw this painting 15 years ago, and none of the awe has left me.

This masterpiece takes up the whole wall that it’s being displayed on. Not only do you have to stand about 5 feet away from the painting as it’s stanchioned off, but this one painting has its very own security guarded posted, compared to their normal one guard per room.

The significance of this painting is that it paints the militia in a non-static pose. The men are doing something in the painting, not just standing there. The painting was originally wider than it is today; the left side of the painting had been cut off long ago.

In the late 70s, some disturbed man went at it with a knife, slashing away. But it had been painstakingly restored so that you can not even see where it was damaged (look closely at where the dog is and you may see a hairline squiggle.)

I think the painting is cheeky too. It is believed that Rembrandt painted himself into the painting; he’s kinda popping up over the shoulder of one of the militiamen. A pre-cursor to Where’s Waldo?, if you will.

My club sandwich Monet at the museum cafe: smoked salmon, cucumber in dill sauce and herb cheese. my new favourite drink is royal club cassis, a fizzy blackcurrent soda.

As the Rijksmuseum was only exhibiting the masterpieces, instead of staying half a day there, I was done in about a couple of hours. That left me with lots of time to go to more museums.

At Museumplain and in front of Rijksmuseum

I walked down the Museumplain, which is the city’s largest square, to the Van Gogh Museum nearby. There are some 200 paintings, 500 drawings and 700 letters housed in he museum. I still only like Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Cafe Terrace at Night, but as I went through the collection and read about his life, the rest of his work became more intriguing to me

At age 25, he wrote he had a strong desire to leave “a certain souvenir” to humankind in the form of drawing or painting. Van Gogh was determined not to take the traditional route of art training, for he loathed “conventional language that did not derive from nature”.

He chose to study on his own. His first attempt at a masterpiece was the potato eaters. He figured the time was ripe to paint, “what I am not yet able to, in order to learn how to do it.”

I think it’s because of his philosophies, I came to appreciate Van Gogh more today. He also dreamed of collaborating with like minded artists. He believed together they would be stronger, artistically and financially and better able to reform modern art through joint exhibitions and forming an artists community.

Unfortunately, Van Gogh was stricken with an illness, thought to be some form of epilepsy. After a stay in a mental asylum and fearing his artistic talent was on the wane, he shot himself in the chest and died 2 days later, with his brother Theo by his side. Theo would die 6 months after Van Gogh. The devoted brothers were buried side by side in Auvers-sur-Oise.

On the other floors of the Van Gogh museum are collections of his friends and contemporaries who were influenced by Van Gogh.

One that I spent some time in front of was the newly acquired painting, Woman on the Champs Elysee at Night by Louis Anquentin. The dots on the woman’s veil caught my eye from across the room. Anquentin liked to portray the lesbian scene of 1890. He depicted lesbians on the make, cruising around in carriages and signalling and picking up solitary women who may be looking for adventure.

There were 2 other Anquentin paintings displayed: Portrait of Emile Bernard and Conversation in Time, which the Van Gogh museum purchased 3 years ago.

Next stop was the Allard Pierson museum which is an archaelogical museum, featuring ancient Egypt and Greek/Roman civilizations. Although the British Museum and the Louvre offer much more on these eras, what they don’t have are mummy posters adorning their walls. Above the tv which was running a loop on how the Allard Pierson acquired their mummies, were hung the Brendan Fraser Mummy and Boris Korloff mummy posters. Those Dutch are so cheeky.

Allard Pierson’s mummification room

My last museum stop of the day was the nearby Amsterdam Historisch Museum, which is dedicated to seven centuries of Amsterdam history. It’s helpful to visit this museum during the first day or two of your visit to get a sense of the city’s history.

Originally a convent, and then an old city orphanage, the 24 roomed museum presents exhibits and interactive displays charting Amsterdam’s growth and metamorphosis.

As museums close at 5pm, I ended up window shopping and walking up to Dam Square. Every city that I’ve been to has a sort of mecca where locals and tourists convene to people watch, where there buskers and entertainers galore. Vancouver has Robson Square, San Francisco has Union Square, London has Trafalgar Square and New York has Union Square.

Checked out De Bijenkorf, which is the Dutch equivalent to Harrods in London. Then walked up the Damrak, where it was bustling with tourists and souvenirs.

It was just nearly 7pm and I had been out since 10am, so I bought some groceries and headed back to the AirBnB. My plan was to rest my poor feet, eat some dinner and then head out to the red light district. However, my body had different plans. Sitting in bed, I crashed. And woke up 4 hours later.

It was dark, I hadn’t eaten dinner yet and by the time I got ready, it would be too late to head out. I was bested again by jet lag.

View more photos of my trip on my Flickr album.