Museum Van Loon is a

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

located in a canalside house alongside the

Keizersgracht The Keizersgracht (; "Emperor's canal") is a canal in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It is the second of the three main Amsterdam canals that together form the Grachtengordel, or canal belt, and lies between the inner Herengracht and outer Prinseng ...

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. The museum is named after the family Van Loon that lived in the house from the 19th century.

History

The canal house where the museum resides was built in 1672, and served as the home of artist Ferdinand Bol. From 1884 to 1945 the Van Loons lived in the house. Thora van Loon-Egidius, who lived in the house, was a

lady-in-waiting A lady-in-waiting (alternatively written lady in waiting) or court lady is a female personal assistant at a Royal court, court, attending on a royal woman or a high-ranking nobility, noblewoman. Historically, in Europe, a lady-in-waiting was o ...

for

Wilhelmina of the Netherlands Wilhelmina (; Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Maria; 31 August 1880 – 28 November 1962) was List of monarchs of the Netherlands, Queen of the Netherlands from 1890 until her abdication in 1948. She reigned for nearly 58 years, making her the longest- ...

Architecture and collection

The house was designed in 1672 by Adriaan Dortsman, the famous Dutch architect known for having created the Ronde Lutherse Kerk. There are four sculptures on top of the house, representing Ceres,

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

Minerva Minerva (; ; ) is the Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. She is also a goddess of warfare, though with a focus on strategic warfare, rather than the violence of gods such as Mars. Be ...

and Vulcan. The interior of the house has been renovated, and appears reminiscent of its look in the 18th-century, with wood paneling and

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

work. The upstairs features several paintings of Roman sports figures and a bedroom that is decorated with a

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

period painting of Italy. The house also has fake bedroom doors: the 18th-century owners desired to have symmetry in the interior design so they painted the real bedroom doors to match the walls and fake doors to appear real in a location where one would assume a door would be.

Exhibitions

The museum regularly organizes contemporary art exhibitions: Immersion (2011), Foam in Van Loon III : Daniëlle van Ark (2012), Suspended Histories (2013), Presentations by Asian contemporary art dealers (2013), AIR in Museum Van Loon with Quirine Racké & Helena Muskens (2014), Something Thrown in Way of the Observer (2015), AIR in Museum Van Loon with Jasmijn Visser (2015), Foam in Van Loon IV (2016), Turkish Tulips : Gavin Turk (2017), Presentation Thérèse Schwartze Award (2017), Güler Ates : Unfold (2017), Ronit Porat : Sophiornithidae (2017), Julien Spiewak : Corps de style (2018), Marijn Bax : Mores (2018), Stéphanie Saadé : The Travels of Here and Now (2019), Says Who? (2023), Euphrates, Heritage, Eternity (2023), Home and the World (2024).

References

External links

Museum Van Loon
(official website) {{Authority control Museums in Amsterdam Museums established in 1973 Historic house museums in the Netherlands Buildings of the Dutch Golden Age Baroque architecture in the Netherlands