Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art

Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art Review

Amsterdam's celebrated treasurehouse of modern art, the Stedelijk finally reopened (in September 2012) following a massive refurbishment of this wedding-cake Neo-Renaissance structure built in 1895. In true Amsterdam fashion, the locals were quick to nickname the futuristic addition by globally acclaimed local architects Benthem/Crouwel the"Badkuip"(Bathtub); it incorporates a glass-walled restaurant (which you can visit, along with the museum shop, without a museum ticket). The new Stedelijk boasts twice the exhibition space compared to the old, thanks, in part, to the new Bathub, which will now host temporary shows (watch out for Suprematist Malevich in 2013 and the noted South-African-Dutch painter Marlene Dumas in 2014).

As for the Stedelijk's old building, it is now now home to the museum's own, fabled collection of modern and contemporary art. While this collection harbors many works by such ancients of modernism as Chagall, Cézanne, Picasso, Monet, Mondriaan, and Malevich, there is a definite emphasis on the post-World War II period: with such local CoBrA boys as Appel and Corneille; American Pop artists as Warhol, Johns, Oldenburg, and Liechtenstein; Abstract Expressionists as de Kooning and Pollock; and contemporary German Expressionists as Polke, Richter, and Baselitz; and displays of Dutch essentials like De Stijl school, including the game-changing Red Blue Chair that Gerrit Rietveld designed in 1918 and Mondriaan's 1920 trail-blazing Composition in Red, Black, Yellow, Blue, and Grey.