Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar and the Dutch Kremer family have announced plans for potentially housing the Kremer Collection on long-term loan at the Alkmaar museum. The private collection of around a hundred seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings has been assembled by the Kremers over the past 30 years. The loan will enhance Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar’s offerings in seventeenth-century art and add greater urgency to the museum’s longstanding desire to expand its space.

“It is fantastic that we may be able to present this internationally renowned collection, which includes an early Rembrandt, in Alkmaar for the foreseeable future. This will enable us to place our own collection in the context of national developments at the time and will thus be an important complement to our collection. In one fell swoop, Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar will join the ranks of Dutch museums with leading collections of seventeenth-century art” said Marrigje Rikken, director of Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar.

To accommodate the private collection, the museum will need additional space. This extraordinary opportunity adds greater urgency to the museum’s ambition to expand. For some time, Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar has had a desire to create more space for public activities, co-creation, education and presentations of contemporary and other art. This will allow the museum to serve residents of and visitors to Alkmaar and the region even better.

Since 1994, George and Ilone Kremer have been building the Kremer Collection, which comprises around a hundred paintings, including work by Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Judith Leyster, Caesar van Everdingen and Michael Sweerts. The collection encompasses a wide range of genres, including landscapes, history paintings, Italianate art, seascapes, portraits and genre painting. Fifty works from the collection are presently on display in Alkmaar in the temporary exhibition The Kremer Collection: A Shared Love (until 1 June).