Amsterdam Museumplein And Vondelpark

Just look at the name of the neighborhood: two of the best art collections in the world lie within two blocks of each other here. ’Nuff said.

Paulus Potterstraat 7. Tram #2 or 5 to Paulus Potterstraat. Tram #3, 12, and 16 also stop nearby at the Museumplein. ☎570 5252; www.vangoghmuseum.nl. Open M-Th and Sa-Su 10am-6pm, F 10am-10pm. Ticket office and restaurant close 5:30pm; museum shop closes 5:45pm. €10, ages 13-17 €2.50, under 12 free. Ticket price includes admission to the exhibition wing. Audio tours €4. AmEx/MC/V with €25 min. purchase.

For better or for worse, the Van Gogh Museum is one of Amsterdam’s biggest cultural tourist attractions and, as such, suffers from some of the longest lines in town. If you think you’ll beat the crowd by showing up a few minutes before the museum opens, you’re wrong—on weekends, the queue unfurls down the stairs and onto the sidewalk before the cash register even warms up. You’ll find the shortest wait if you show up around 10:30am, when the initial line has dissipated, or after 4pm, when the crowds are heading home. To avoid hassle, you can also reserve your tickets online at www.vangoghmuseum.nl or, for a small service charge, through the Uitburo (www.uitburo.nl). The audio tour available in the lobby is a mixture of historical information and material from Vincent van Gogh’s letters and personal writing, but if you can’t stomach a dramatic British voice and well-timed classical music, it’s best to save your dough. Don’t be deterred by logistics: this museum is well worth the wait and the money.

With a new wing completed in 1999 and further renovations to the main building in 2007, the Van Gogh Museum seems to be set on propelling this modern Dutch master to 21st-century stardom. The original 1973 building by De Stijl designer Gerrit Rietveld has large, white exhibition spaces that reverberate with aloof Modernist cool. Here you’ll find the permanent collection, including the meat of the museum, the Van Gogh masterpieces, on the first floor (upstairs from the ticket desk and book shop). The second floor is home to a study area with web consoles and a small library, while the third floor houses a substantial collection of important 19th-century art by Impressionist, post-Impressionist, Realist, and Symbolist painters and sculptors. The partially subterranean exhibition wing, designed by Kisho Kurokawa and completed in 1999, is so curvaceous that it’s known as “the mussel.” This hyper-modern space, encircling an outdoor patio, is the venue for the museum’s top-notch traveling exhibitions. The museum is relatively small; count on seeing it all in one morning or afternoon.

First Floor. The collection here unfolds in chronological order, beginning with Van Gogh’s dark, ponderous, Dutch period. The famous Potato Eaters (1885), a depiction of a struggling peasant family at the dinner table, is the crowning achievement of the painter’s early work. In 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris, where he was at last confronted with “modern” (for the time) art. As a result, his paintings became brighter and more experimental. Vincent’s love for japonaiserie emerged with The Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige) and The Courtesan, in which he incorporated the flatness and stylization of Japanese woodblock prints into his nascent mature style. The last phases of his artistic development coincide with his insanity-induced relocation to Arles, Saint-Remy, and Auvers-sur-Oise; these walls contain some of his most recognizable works. One of the museum’s decided gems is the Bedroom at Arles, where Van Gogh used thick impasto paint and a skewed perspective to bring us inside his private space of rest in the Yellow House, his living quarters in Arles. Despite the then-record US$49 million their sibling fetched at a 1987 auction, his studies of Sunflowers, made for close friend and rival Paul Gauguin, are not the most spectacular works of Vincent’s career; masterpieces like Branches of an Almond Tree in Blossom, made for his newborn nephew, and Wheatfield with Crows, completed just before his suicide in 1890, steal the show.

Second Floor. This study area attempts some more didactic exhibits on Van Gogh’s life and artistry. An excellent collection of smaller works by Van Gogh and his contemporaries—including some unbeatable self-portraits—are hung like specimens behind glass, while a multitude of computers allow you to surf the museum’s surprisingly informative and sprawling website. A demonstration of how Van Gogh chose and mixed the colors of his palette provides rare esoteric insight into the minutiae of his craft.

Third Floor. This collection of European painting and sculpture from 1840-1920 does far more than simply contextualize Van Gogh’s painterly development; several of the pieces are masterful in their own right. Don’t miss Gauguin’s stunning Self-Portrait with Portrait of Bernard or the collection of paintings by friend Emile Bernard, Symbolist Odillon Redon, and Pointillist Georges Seurat.

Tgif. The Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum are open until 10pm on Fridays, but the tourist hordes seem to spend that time somewhere else. Take advantage for some personal moments with the world’s greatest painters!

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Stadhouderskade 42. Tram #2 or 5 to Paulus Potterstraat or tram #6, 7, or 10 to Spiegelgracht. Cross the canal and you can’t miss it—it’s the huge neo-Gothic castle. The two main entrances off the main building of the Rijksmuseum will be closed for the duration of the museum’s renovation; visitors must enter instead through the Philips Wing, around the corner at the intersection of Hobbemastraat and Jan Luijkenstraat. ☎674 7000; www.rijksmuseum.nl. Open M-Th and Sa-Su 10am-5pm, F 10am-10pm. Maps available at the ticket counters. €10, under 18 free. Audio tours €4.

Even though the main building of the museum is closed for renovations (due to be completed in 2009), the Rijksmuseum is still a mandatory Amsterdam excursion. During restoration, the smaller Philips Wing will remain open to show masterpieces of 17th-century painting, including works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals, and Jan Steen. Originally opened in 1800, the Rijks—or “state”—museum settled into its current monumental quarters, designed by Pierre Cuypers (also the architect of Centraal Station) in 1885. As the national museum of art and history, it houses an encyclopedic collection of top-notch Dutch art and artifacts from the Middle Ages through the 19th century; a comprehensive exhibit on Dutch history; a collection of Asian art; and an enormous selection of furniture, Delftware, and decorative objects, including two exquisitely detailed dollhouses. Unfortunately, while the museum undergoes renovation, much of this collection will not be on display. However, you may be able to catch a glimpse of some of the museum’s holdings on loan elsewhere in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. For information on temporary locations, or if you’re wondering about a particular piece, ask at the information desk. Two audio tours are available for visitors: the more historical one is led by the museum’s director; the other—dubbed “Jeroen Krabbé’s favorites” and led by the famous Dutch actor, painter, and director—is a more personal tour focusing on the artistry of the paintings themselves.

You will find few crucifixion scenes at the Rijksmuseum; traditional Dutch art is distinguished from its traditional European counterparts by its focus on the secular and the everyday. Nearly all 17th-century Golden Age painting in the Netherlands was the product of free-market mercantilism: most of the domestic interiors, civic portraits, landscapes, and vanitas pictures were commissioned by wealthy Dutch merchants for their private homes.

Of this tour-de-force collection, Rembrandt van Rijn’s gargantuan militia portrait Night Watch is a crowning, and deservedly famous, achievement. Equally breathtaking is the museum’s collection of paintings by Johannes Vermeer. Only 31 paintings by the master of Delft survive; the Rijks possesses four. The Milkmaid, from 1668, something of an icon of Dutch genre painting, shows the title woman in front of an open window pouring a pitcher of milk into a bowl. The exquisite light in this painting links it with other painted works of the Dutch Golden Age; Night Watch and The Milkmaid are the foremost examples of this extraordinary mastery, but the attention to light is evident in paintings throughout the galleries. The museum’s other paintings by Vermeer share a similar luminous intensity and voyeuristic intimacy. For more on Vermeer’s work, including The Love Letter, see On the Trail of Vermeer.

Hans Bollonger’s vanitas painting is a reminder of human ephemerality; this painting of a vase of vibrant tulips was painted two years after the collapse of the tulip market, while the insects on the table serve as a reminder of death. The subversive morality of Jan Steen’s painting is evident in The Merry Family, which depicts a family boisterously singing and drinking—even the young children hold glasses of wine. A hidden message in the rightmost corner of the canvas reads, “as the old song is, so will the young pipe play,” a warning to parents that their children will inevitably follow in their footsteps. Be sure not to miss Pieter de Hooch’s interior scenes (renowned for their “keyhole” details within details), the fine miniature panels of Gerard Dou, Pieter Saenredam’s paintings of luminous church interiors, or Frans Hals’s magnificently gestural brushwork.

Other Museums

Although the Filmmuseum is dedicated to the celebration and preservation of film, the “museum” where these films are “exhibited” is a movie theater, and most visitors to the Filmmuseum come to see movies. As the national center for cinema in the Netherlands, the museum’s collection of films and books on film claims 35,000 titles stretching back to 1898. In addition to screening several films a day, they have occasional exhibits (€2) and maintain an information center at Vondelstraat 69 (to the right when exiting the Filmmuseum), which houses the Netherlands’s largest collection of books and periodicals on film, many in English. Students and aficionados research film in the non-circulating archives or on the computerized databases; anyone can browse the collection, and the friendly staff can help you with any request. The center’s staff is constantly at work archiving hundreds of thousands of images, magazines, posters, newspaper clippings, and film soundtracks; much of the work goes on behind the scenes, but anyone with an interest can ask to see some of the older and more valuable works that are kept behind closed doors. Visitors can also screen videos from the museum’s collection in the library’s booths (€12.50, students €4.50), but you may need to reserve ahead of time. If all you want to do here is sit back and watch a movie, (Vondelpark 3, in the park between the Roemer Visscherstraat and Vondelstraat entrances. ☎589 1400; www.filmmuseum.nl.)