
The story
To reach this museum you cross a national park, often on one of the free white bicycles, riding through the heath and pine of the Hoge Veluwe. The forest was once the private estate of Anton and Helene Kröller-Müller, and the art inside is Helene's life's work. Between 1908 and 1929 she bought on an extraordinary scale, convinced that Vincent van Gogh was a great modern master before most of the world agreed, and she gathered nearly 90 of his paintings and more than 180 drawings.
That makes it the largest Van Gogh holding after the Van Gogh Museum, and here his work hangs in daylight and quiet, from sombre early Dutch heads to the blazing Café Terrace at Night, painted in Arles. Helene gave her collection and the estate to the Dutch state, and the museum, designed by the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde, opened in 1938, low and horizontal so the rooms open onto the woods.
The other half of a visit is outside. The sculpture garden, laid out from 1961, spreads over around 30 hectares of lawn and forest and is one of the largest in Europe, with works by Rodin, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Dubuffet and Claes Oldenburg set among the trees. A giant trowel driven into the grass and a mirrored maze turn the walk between them into part of the art.
Collection
60 works
Still Life with Three Birds' NestsVincent van Gogh, 1885
Still Life with Three Birds' NestsVincent van Gogh, 1885
Study with spruce in the fallVincent van Gogh, 1889
The garden at the asylum at Saint-RémyVincent van Gogh, 1889
The green vineyardVincent van Gogh, 1888
The Hill of MontmartreVincent van Gogh, 1886
The Sower (after Millet)Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Weaver, Interior with Three Small WindowsVincent van Gogh, 1884
Woman at TableVincent van Gogh, 1885
Woman with a BroomVincent van Gogh, 1885