otterlo
an artmuseum in the middle of a national park
The village of Otterlo has not much to offer except its church and its supermarket. But hundred thousands of people come here any way. How come? Kröller Museum, home to one of the worlds leading Van Gogh museums is in the neat by national park Hoge Veluwe.
Hoge Veluwe National Park
The park was established by the businessman Anton Kröller and his wife Helene Kröller-Müller as an private estate in 1909. Up until 1923 the park was under construction with wildlife being imported and the building of the hunting lodge and fences. The hunting residence is called St. Hubertus Hunting Lodge after St. Hubertus and was designed by prominent Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage. Helene Kröller-Müller was an art collector and work had begun on a museum inside the park.
Due to worsening economic conditions the building of the museum was halted and the couple found themselves unable to keep the estate. In 1935 the art collection was donated to the State of the Netherlands, which then continued to build the Kröller-Müller Museum. The park was handed over to a foundation, which received a loan from the State. At that time the estate became the second national park in the Netherlands. The park is still one of the two private owned national parks in the Netherlands, but the only one that asks an entrance fee. It is approximately 55 square kilometers in area, consisting of heathlands, sand dunes, and woodlands. It is situated in the Veluwe, the area of the largest terminal moraine in the Netherlands. Most of the landscape of the park and the Veluwe was created during the last Ice Age. The alternating sand dune areas and heathlands may have been caused by human utilization of the surrounding lands. The park forms one of the largest continuous nature reserves in the Netherlands. |
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kröller-müller museum
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The Kröller-Müller Museum is an art museum and sculpture garden. The museum was founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller and opened in 1938. It has the second-largest collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh, after the Van Gogh Museum. The museum also has a sculpture garden.
The Kröller-Müller Museum was founded by Helene Kröller-Müller, an avid art collector who was one of the first to recognize Vincent van Gogh's genius and collect his works. In 1935, she donated her whole collection to the state of the Netherlands. In 1938, the museum, which was designed by Henry van de Velde, opened to the public. The sculpture garden was added in 1961 and the new exhibition wing, designed by Wim Quist, opened in 1977. The museum has a considerable collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh, such as Cafe Terrace at Night, Sorrowing Old Man ('At Eternity's Gate') and a version of The Potato Eaters, making it the second-largest collection of Van Gogh paintings in the world (after the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam). Apart from the Van Gogh paintings other highlights include works by Piet Mondrian, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Odilon Redon, Georges Braque, Paul Gauguin, Lucas Cranach, James Ensor, Juan Gris, and Pablo Picasso. The Kröller-Müller Museum is also famous for its large sculpture garden, within the forest park, of more than 75 acres (300,000 m2) and one of the largest in Europe, with a fine collection of modern and contemporary sculptures. The garden reflects Helene Kröller-Müller's conception of a symbiosis between art, architecture and nature. The collection includes works by Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Jean Dubuffet, Mark di Suvero, Lucio Fontana, Claes Oldenburg, Fritz Wotruba, Joep van Lieshout and many more. |