Principessa
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I am the Queen
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A museum was closed to the public for 75 years? Was it open to anyone? *bored at work, find rabbit hole now . . ."
Trying to provide you with some stuff.... A radio fragment of Dutch NPORadio4 about the event: https://www.nporadio4.nl/...gaat-na-75-jaar-weer-openKoningin Máxima opent in Amsterdam het Groote Museum van dierentuin Artis. Het museum is gesloten in 1947, omdat het te duur was om open te houden. Nu gaat het museum met een speciaal ontwikkelde tentoonstelling na 75 jaar weer open. Directeur van Artis, Rembrandt Sutorius, vertelt meer.Loosely translated as: Queen Máxima opens the Groote Museum of Artis Zoo in Amsterdam. The museum closed in 1947 because it was too expensive to keep open. Now the museum is reopening after 75 years with a specially developed exhibition. Artis director, Rembrandt Sutorius, tells more.According to a Dutch language site about architecture: https://architectenweb.nl...uws/artikel.aspx?ID=51837Loosely translated as: Artis main building again a museum after 75 years
The Groote Museum, a nationally listed building and part of Amsterdam's Artis zoo, will regain its original function after 75 years. Designed by architectural firm Merk X, the building has undergone a thorough and very successful restoration and renovation.The new museum will open to the public on 12 May with an exhibition designed by Kossmanndejong.
The neoclassical Main Building, as the museum building is also called, was built between 1850 and 1855 after a design by Johannes van Maurik. In addition to the zoo, the Natura Artis Magistra society ('nature is the teacher of art') also wanted a museum to display stuffed animals, skeletons, fossils, rocks and ethnographics. The lower halls of the building served as a club for the members; the high and bright rooms above, with galleries all around, formed the first museum rooms in the Netherlands. In 1947 the Groote Museum had to close due to financial problems.
Now, 75 years later, the museum opens its doors to the public again, with an exhibition according to a contemporary concept, which aims to show the inextricable relationship between people, other animals, plants and other life forms. The Tijgerzaal and the Koningszaal are located on the ground floor of the current Groote Museum, which, as in the past, will be used for meetings. The two rentable reception rooms are located on either side of the roundabout. From this central hall, the historic double staircase leads to the upper floor, where the East and West halls have been redesigned as museum spaces.
Unused and neglected
This first required a thorough restoration and renewal of the building. Parts of the building had been extensively modified over the decades, outbuildings had been built and the west wing, Evelyne Merkx says, had been “disused and neglected for over 65 years” when she started the design process in 2012. The fact that parts of the building had 'solidified in time' made a great impression on her and Merkx wanted to preserve this visible history above all. The design was therefore partly aimed at recovery. For another part, the building had to be made suitable for a contemporary public function, which required a number of structural interventions.
The national monument underwent – literally and figuratively – a major cleaning. For example, outbuildings of a later date have been demolished and missing parts have been reconstructed. The Groote Museum is now free again on the Plantage Middenlaan, a situation that is enhanced by a new public square on the side of the zoo. The square, including a new fountain and conservatory, was designed by landscape architect Michael van Gessel. Brand X has reopened or brought back the six large doors on the square.
The building has also been cleaned in a literal sense. Walls around the butterfly staircase still showed the old paintwork; just like the walls and the display cases in the museum rooms. This has not been painted over, but cleaned with special soap, Merkx says. As a result, the walls and woodwork show a mottled patina, which goes wonderfully well with the sleek and clear design that dominates the ground floor and the basement in particular. The historic atmosphere has also been preserved because the authentic wooden floors have been preserved and the badly damaged butterfly staircase in the roundabout has been restored; the double staircase has also been made suitable for the expected visitor numbers.
Steel table
The building as Merkx found it was, in her words, “very fragile” and in no way met the current standards and requirements for a public museum function. “There were insufficient escape routes, the floors could not support large numbers of visitors and there was no space for coats, bags and puddles,” she explains.
Merkx certainly did not want to sacrifice space in the roundabout or the Tijgerzaal for toilets and wardrobe; she proposed to create a new and spacious entrance area under the Tijgerzaal. Initially this seemed technically unfeasible, but it was possible to place the entire building on a steel table first. “It was equally exciting. We were afraid that cracks would appear between the roundabout and the west wing, because they were not built simultaneously at the time," Merkx says. "It went well."
Discreet reinforcement
After the foundation repair in combination with the realization of the entrance area in a new basement, the roof and facade were tackled. On the Plantage Middenlaan side, the facade had become flat due to the installation of secondary windows. Brand X has reduced the recessed window openings by placing an extra window in the interior. These are placed in the reveal with slender rebates and jump slightly forward; because these windows can also be opened, they create a kind of display case. It is an example of the modest, barely noticeable way in which Merk X has introduced innovations.
Other interventions with a view to the new museum function, such as a structural reinforcement of the exhibition rooms and their galleries, have been incorporated as invisibly as possible. Innovations for lighting, climate control and safety, for example, are also unequivocal. Throughout the building, the railings of stairs and balustrades were too low by modern standards (and often not strong enough), so that Merk X opted to add a new railing where necessary. “It is placed cantilevered above the original one, so that you don't reach for the old railings as a matter of course,” Merkx explains. The glass of the historic showcases is invisibly reinforced with an extra layer, clamped with narrow slats.
New elements
Where new functions have been introduced, Brand X has made them instantly recognizable through their materialization and finish. New elements have been added in both museum rooms, again in a restrained visual language. The Westzaal, which was untouched for about 75 years and therefore still most authentic, is mainly used as an exhibition space; this is equipped with an extra staircase to the gallery. The Oostzaal, which has suffered the most from previous renovations, has a grandstand staircase to facilitate public meetings and also to remove technical facilities. Both elements also offer escape routes in the event of calamities.
The galleries are interconnected with a new bridge through the central hall; the walking route has been further improved on this elevated level with a bridge above the entrance to the Oostzaal. That was not allowed in the West Hall.
The new cellar space houses the reception and a small museum shop, information facilities, lockers, a cloakroom and toilets. Facilities for the organization are also housed here. The spaces are mainly bright white, complemented by light wood; the terrazzo floor and partition walls feature abstracted nature motifs, designed by Evelyne Merkx. She has not only considered major structural and restorative assignments, but also details and 'specials'. This also includes the design of the light object with glass tree fruits in the void of the entrance and the cloud-like light sculpture in the central hall. The former gas lamps in the reception rooms have been restored and enlarged to a design by Merkx.
Exhibition concept
The historic, restored and renovated museum rooms once again offer space for an exhibition. However, the current museum concept is completely different from that of the former Groote Museum. At the time, the museum interior, with systematically arranged collections in display cases, expressed the 19th-century idea that one could create an overview and thus a grip on the world. It also showed man looking at nature as something separate from him. Initiator and artistic director of the new Groote Museum – and former director of Artis – Haig Balian wants to show how everything in nature is connected and that humans are part of it. In an associative and interactive way, the current exhibition tries to break through obviousness and patterns of expectation and to make visitors look (and smell, taste and feel) again.
How do you fit a contemporary exhibition into a building from a completely different time, was the question that Michel de Vaan van Kossmanndejong asked himself. On the one hand, the office has tried to show how visitors used to look at nature in display cases – while also giving the beautiful historic wall furniture itself attention. At the same time, Kossmanndejong wanted to break through this way of viewing, to show the connections between the various themes presented and to make it tangible that man is part of nature. The display cases are therefore partly closed and partly open, with the objects sometimes leaving the display case – such as a parade of skeletons. Presentation furniture has also been placed transversely on the walls with showcases, thus breaking into the longitudinal axis of the exhibition rooms, which has been largely left empty.
Integral and interactive
Many scientists and artists are involved in creating the content for the exhibition – although that word may sound too old-fashioned in this case. It fits in with the original ideas of Natura Artis Magistra, but certainly also with the current idea that we cannot view world problems – such as climate change, declining biodiversity, food supply and water problems – separately, but should approach them as coherently. Also in the arrangement in the Groote Museum, art and science, objects and interactive installations, films and graphic representations form an integral whole.
It is a lot and full: in ideas and information, but also spatially, so that the Westzaal in particular is very busy and full. Fortunately, you can occasionally look outside. For Kossmanndejong, the windows and incoming daylight took some getting used to, because an 'immersive exhibition' works best when the visitor is completely taken into the world presented, without distraction. In this case it is nice to see that this inside is actually connected with that outside: the people, the animals, the trees, life along the Plantage Middenlaan and in Artis.                     |
