Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen closed in 2019 for an extensive renovation and restoration project. At the end of 2021, the new Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen opened to the public, with space for temporary displays in addition to storage. For more information on the museum’s closure, see www.boijmans.nl. For more information on the depot, see www.boijmans.nl/depot.
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Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was named after two collectors who assembled much of its collection: the Utrecht lawyer Frans Boijmans and the Rotterdam port industrialist Daniël George van Beuningen. The museum owns over 154,000 objects: paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages to the present day, decorative arts, industrial and pre-industrial tools and utensils and design, and – the largest section – a collection of drawings and prints. The museum distinguishes itself in its ability to provide an international context for its collection.
Masterpieces from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries include paintings such as The Three Marys at the Tomb attributed to Jan van Eyck, The Glorification of Mary by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child by Hieronymus Bosch, and Pieter Bruegel’s The Tower of Babel. The seventeenth-century painting collection includes Rembrandt’s Titus at a Lectern, Saint Jerome by Anthony van Dyck, seven of the eight oil sketches produced for Rubens’s Achilles series, Pieter Claesz’s Breakfast Piece, and A Cornfield, In the Background the Zuiderzee by Jacob van Ruisdael.
The Print Room has a collection of some 20,000 drawings and 70,000 prints. The Crucifixion of Christ, attributed to Jan van Eyck, is one of the few fifteenth-century drawings in a Dutch collection. Another masterpiece is the drawing The Owl’s Nest by Hieronymus Bosch. There are also drawings by Rubens, Bruegel, Rembrandt, and Jordaens as well as a large collection of Italian drawings.
Finally, the museum has a large arts and crafts and design collection, with highlights including the tulip cabinet and three art cabinets made by Herman Doomer in the first half of the seventeenth century.
Dr. Sandra Kisters, Director of Collections and Research and Dr. Ruben Suykerbuyk, Curator of Old Masters (June 2023)