Museums and Concerts

So I haven’t been working for the last 2 weeks, so what exactly have I been doing? Obviously, I have had plenty of time to do some sight-seeing, lots of walking to familiarise myself with the city and to explore Amsterdam’s Museums and cultural life. There is a surprising number of museums and probably the best deal I’ve ever encountered is the Museum Card. 35Euros gives you free entry into most of the museums in the Netherlands (not just Amsterdam!) for a whole year! Given that entry into some of these places costs 10Euro, it is a complete bargain – and you can visit each museum as many times as you’d like! Definitely my best buy since I have been here!

The Heineken Experience

This is a very odd collection of information on beer brewing and distribution set up in Heineken’s original Amsterdam Brewery. It is a very technological affair with multi-media displays, videos of past Heineken advertisements and even 2 extremely strange “ride experiences”. The first lets you feel what it’s like to be a bottle on the Heineken production line and the second to drive a horse and cart delivering Heineken through Amsterdam. Very strange. Probably the best thing about this experience, though, is the 3 beers included with the entry ticket. The first is at a bar halfway through the “experience” (in case you need it after the exhilaration of that first “ride”) and then 2 at the end of the self-guided tour. What made it even better was the group of Spanish girls in the last bar who didn’t like beer who gave me and a couple of other guys all of their tokens for free beer. I spent a lot longer in that bar than planned and left a lot drunker than Mr Heineken probably intended…


Concertgebouw concert

On Saturday night I found out about some free tickets to a concert in the Concertgebouw given by the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of Mahler’s Symphony 7 and a premiere of a work by Neuwirth. The hall is renowned for its near perfect acoustics and I had a seat in the choir stalls, behind the orchestra so I could watch the conductor. It was a fantastic, exhilarating performance that reminded me that I don’t go to orchestral concerts enough.

Amsterdam Historic Museum and Civic Guard Gallery

Right next to my apartment here is the Amsterdam Historic Museum. It is located in an old orphanage and outlines the history of the city of Amsterdam. It sounds quite dry, but is actually a very interesting collection of paintings and artefacts (not sure if that’s the right word, but it sounds better than “stuff”) showing how the canals were created with landfill and built up to create the city. It also goes through the period of Dutch trading and ships as well as giving interesting insights into how typical Amsterdammers live.

Part of the museum is the Civic Guard Gallery which is free and contains a number of large portraits of the Civic Guards (police and fire squads) that hung in every station. These paintings were done by many of Rembrandt’s contemporaries and one of his most famous paintings (The Night Watch) was a portrait in this style. It is really amazing that all of these enormous, amazing paintings are hanging on view for free right next to my apartment.

Stedelijk Museum

The Stedelijk Museum is the modern art museum in Amsterdam and frequent readers will know that I love modern art museums. However, like many of the museums in Amsterdam at the moment, the main museum is closed for renovations and they have relocated selections of their collection to a very strange office building near central station. I expected that they would be showing a selection of highlights of their collection which includes some very well known pieces by famous artists, but instead they have a serious of short term contemporary exhibitions which I found to be just a little boring (dear I say wanky???). After a long walk and some difficulty finding it, I was a bit disappointed.

Rijksmuseum

Another one of the galleries that is currently undergoing significant renovations, the Rijksmuseum is enormous and has an impressive collection of Dutch Masters (especially Rembrandt) and many other pieces including ceramics, sculpture, furniture etc. One wing of the museum is open to the public, however, with a selection of the highlights of their collection (a much better idea!). The museum is very well laid out and explained in English and I really enjoyed wandering the galleries. Most of this art is in a style that I don’t usually take much time over in other galleries (Dresden had a huge collection that I found really dull) but it makes more sense here and is better presented and explained. Rembrandt’s The Night Watch is probably the highlight, though there were also some other fantastic Rembrandts and portraits by Vermeer that are beautiful.

Van Gogh Museum

I had already visited this museum when I was last in Amsterdam and was a little disappointed to find that they too are doing some renovations and so the regular collection of Van Gogh paintings has been moved around and isn’t quite as nicely presented at the moment. I really only visited the museum this time because I had some time to kill and could get in for free (hooray for the Museum Card!). I only briefly visited the Van Gogh sections of the museum and will go back to spend some more time here later in the month. I mainly visited a special exhibition of work by Max Beckmann, a German artist who was exiled to Amsterdam during World War II as his art was considered degenerate. The exhibition was huge and exhausting as Beckmann’s work is very intense, influenced by Picasso and the German Expressionists.

Lunchtime Concert

Back at the Concertgebouw, I attended a free lunchtime concert giving by Phillipe Herreweghe and the Concertgebouw Orchestra and a rather amazing choir performing works by Berlioz and Kuhlau. Although it was more like an open rehearsal, it is amazing to think that these world renowned performers are giving free lunchtime concerts! If only the MSO did something similar…

Bible Museum

Probably not even worth writing about. I went because it was free. It really was as dull as the name of the museum implies. Though they had a nice special exhibition of lithographs by Max Beckmann (illustrations of the Book of Revelations) that tied in nicely with my visit to the Van Gogh Museum earlier in the week.