Closed in 2003 and originally planned to reopen in 2008, the ‘New Rijksmuseum’ finally opened its completely renovated and restored building to the public on 13th April this year. The Museum’s main building was closed for too long – for many years only a very limited sampling of its holdings was on display in the Philips Wing. One initially feels relief at being able to see once more the extent of the Museum’s superb collections, but this soon turns into admiration for what has been achieved. P.H. Cuypers’s 1885 building, whose original layout and interior had been severely compromised by a series of later interventions, has re-emerged triumphantly, while the newly integrated displays are a tremendous improvement.

It is not as if the original building was easy to begin with. Conceived as a gateway to the city’s outskirts, an archway spans a road running through the building at its central axis, and thus the Museum never had a central entrance. In the 1960s the large courtyards on either side of this axis were filled in with several storeys of galleries which provided ample display space, but made it well-nigh impossible for visitors to orientate themselves once they had gained the building through one of its two side entrances. Today the road remains open to Amsterdam’s ubiquitous cyclists (whose vigorous defence of their right to ride their bicycles underneath the building caused much of the delay), but now that the 1960s galleries have been removed and the courtyards again function as public spaces, visitors will find their way more easily around what is still a vast complex. The Museum’s most famous paintings can be seen in the Gallery of Honour leading up to Rembrandt’s Night watch and visitors can explore clearly demarcated sections devoted to specific periods. At the corners of each floor, rotating displays from the Museum’s outstanding collection of prints and drawings are cleverly incorporated into the circuit. Those who wish to delve further into the Museum’s extensive holdings of decorative arts and historical objects can visit the Special Collections housed in the basement.

An Editorial in 2000 commented on the plans for the Rijksmuseum, raising several important points.1 It is gratifying to see that, even after the long intervening period, the Museum has adhered to most of its original plans, while avoiding many possible pitfalls. In the last century the Rijksmuseum’s originally sumptuous in­terior had been whitewashed to conform to modernist sensibilities, and in the 1980s there had been a ‘cautious, piecemeal return to some of the original structural elements’. This has now been taken much further, including the return of the painted decorations, and even the reinstallation of the didactic murals in the front hall. The aim was to ‘restore unity and coherence to the building’ and to ‘restore and exploit its main architectural forms’. This has been achieved to great effect: the building’s circulation has been much improved by the spacious courtyards, which now function again as the building’s ‘lungs’. Some of the display space lost through the removal of the inbuilt galleries has been recouped in the basement.

By far the most daring decision – to combine painting, decorative arts and Dutch history into a single integrated chronological display – is a triumphant success. The Rijksmuseum is perhaps unique in the world in that it tells the story both of a nation’s art and of its history. (The non-Dutch collections are also on display, mostly in the galleries spanning 1100 to 1600, but also in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century galleries, while a separate pavilion has been erected behind the main building for the Asian collections.) Although one can occasionally see evidence of a few tugs of war between the ‘fine arts’ curators and those responsible for the Museum’s historical collections, on the whole the two have been very well integrated, with the art displayed largely as art and not as illustrations of a historical point.

Only occasionally do rooms jar, as when Rembrandt’s early work has to share a gallery which is also partly devoted to the Peace of Münster (1648). There is an occasional lack of drama: in the same room Rembrandt’s superb Landscape with a stone bridge, one of the Museum’s indisputable gems that could easily hold a wall by itself, is lost in the display, while an entire wall is wasted on three insipid portraits by the master. In the eight­eenth-cen­tury display the Museum’s irresistible pastels by Liotard are too casually integrated into a largely decorative installation; they should ideally be exhibited emphatically as art (as they were in the ‘old Rijksmuseum’). One could object that in many rooms the grey wall colours are too dark, especially in the section devoted to the otherwise magnificently installed earlier art in the basement galleries, where unintended associations with the ‘dark ages’ inevitably occur. Lighter colours have been used for the nineteenth century, where the picture hang is perhaps a little too decorative and again lacking in drama (another gem of a landscape, Monet’s La Corniche near Monaco, is tucked away in a corner). Lighter colours are also found in the top galleries in the building’s towers, which were not previously part of the circuit. Here the twentieth century is on display in galleries that are mostly disappointing, both as spaces and in what they have to offer (as we have commented before, it remains unclear how this part of the collection should develop, if indeed it belongs in the Museum at all).2

But we should be very grateful that the Rijksmuseum has eschewed a British-style ‘country-house hang’ and has largely managed to create displays that have both beauty and meaning. Wall colours can be changed and it may even prove possible to correct the occasional mishap in the hang (although the installations seem inflexible). Most importantly, the displays are not marred by interactive computer screens. Where we do find such screens, in the Special Collections, they are discreetly incorporated and have an undeniable logic, successfully making up for the fact that labelling the myriad objects individually would have been distracting and inadequate.

While previously a visit to the Rijksmuseum could be con­fusing, forbidding and even dispiriting, with visitors inevitably neglecting large swathes of the Museum, they are now encouraged to look at the collection as a whole in a visit that is infinitely more inviting, effortless and illuminating. This alone justifies the entire project. Visitor numbers during the first month have already far exceeded expectations, and the Rijksmuseum will quickly have to teach itself to be a museum again. This should also find expression in future exhibitions and acquisitions, which should display the same discrimination and judicious historical flair now found throughout the Museum.

1    ‘The Rijksmuseum: “Holland at its broadest”?’, The Burlington Magazine 142 (2000), p.139.
2    ‘The New Rijksmuseum’, ibid. 151 (2009), p.75.