Museums, Rotterdam

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If you want to know more about Rotterdam’s maritime history, this is the right place. The history of the harbour is one of the main focus points, as well as the Holland-Amerika-Lijn (a shipping company, now part of a larger US-group) and ships in general. The museum is really huge, so that you can easily spend many hours in it. An open-air area shows you old ships and maritime items from the past centuries. With its root dating back to 1852, this is the oldest museum of its kind in the Netherlands. Like in most of Rotterdam’s museums, english information is existant, but not as extensive as the one in dutch. But if you like ships or want to have some background info after a harbour tour, I would recommend a visit here.

Once the world’s largest harbour, Rotterdam has established and maintained connections to most parts of the world. So it is no coincidence that many items from all over this planet found its way to Rotterdam into a huge collection of artpieces from the last centuries. Interesting exhibitions about international and intercultural relationships take place here too. I visited one about the Dalai Lama and his predecessors and a second one called “Rotterdammers” about the cultural backgrounds of Rotterdam’s multi-ethnic population. There was also an interesting part showing us how the image of Africans changed (or – unfortunately - sometimes didn’t change) in Europe during the last centuries and decades. Brings some warm clothes with you – for conservation of all the exhibits the temperature in some parts of the museum is kept very low.

The permanent exhibitions were nice, but not exciting. But "Rotterdammers" and the Dalai Lama were both excellent! They exceeded my expectations by far.

This is a Nature Historical Museum. It's got sceletons of animals, stuffed animals, conserved animals and expostitions. The museum is a lot of fun for children to, becuase they can find out things for themselves.
It's opened Tuesday to Saturday: 10.00 to 17.00
Sundays and Holidays: 11.00 to 17.00
Admission is 4.00 EURO.

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The Chabot Museum is housed in a striking white villa just east of the Dutch Architecture Institute. This villa is designed by the architect G.W. Baas and the Italian architect L.Stokla. In the museum you can find the collection of the painter and sculptor H.Chabot (1894-1949).

The work of Chabot has much in common with expressionist painters. In the museum you can see his sculptures, paintings, graphics and drawings depicting portraits, studies of animals and figures and landscapes.

I never visited this museum myself, but saw lots of people entering the museum. In the museum are also exhibitions of artists from the same period.

Opening hours:
tue,wed, thu, fri 11am till 4.30 pm
sat 11am till 5pm
sun 12am till 5pm

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Since 1927 the Nature Museum is located in the monumental Villa Dijkzigt, built in 1852. The modern extension of the museum is designed by the Mecanoo architects. This pavilion of glass, being the largest display case of the Netherlands, forms an unity with the architecture of the neighbouring Kunsthal.

The 25 meter long skeleton of the sperm-whale is one of the most striking objects of the museum. The collection of the museum is displayed in different exhibitions. There are lots of skeletons, skulls, insects, shells, fossiles, animals and a herbarium, in short everything the nature produces.

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The wereld museum or World Art Museum brings allready more than 100 years the world to Rotterdam. The collection of the museum amounts about approximately 200,000 items. From 2000 the neigbouring buildings were added, so the exhibition halls were doubled.

The museum offers exhibitions of contemporary and historical cultures from all over the world, from Brazil to Uzbekistan and Tibet, from the Netherlands to Singapore. The often unusual exhibitions and events stimulate and surprise the visitors by cross-cultural inspiration. The exhibitions show visual arts, masterpieces of textile, old photographs of people made by the first explorers. Since the end of the eighties contemporary art, photography and film are an essential part of the new collection policy as well.

The kids of 7-13 years can stay in Hotel ‘Het Reispaleis’ and find the answers at questions like what are people from all over the world doing here, what kind of work do they do or which things are precious to them?

Summer 2006 when I visited the World Museum there was an exhibition about Tibet and the 14 Dalai Lamas. Many years ago I visited an interesting exhibition about adobe architecture.

The ‘Wereldcafé’ of the museum follows the themes of the actual exhibitions for its meals. It has a terrace by the water, a perfect spot for a meal, lunch or drink.

Opening hours of the museum:
10am till 5pm

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The Kunsthal is a exhibitionhall that offers about 25 exhibitions annually at 3300 m2 of exhibition space. There are three main halls, a design-gallery and a photo-gallery. So five or six exhibitions can be held simultaneously. The striking and compact building is designed by Rem Koolhaas and Fumi Hoshino. It is a nice artwork of architecture. Except the exhibition halls there is spacious auditorium, a café-restaurant and a bookshop.

The annual exhibitions in the Kunsthal display a wide range of varied forms of art and culture like art, design and photography, old and new, elitist and popular. The Kunsthal often experiments with themes that have never been used for an exhibition before, which approach produces a fascinating repertoire. I saw an interesting overview exhibition of Picasso as well.

Opening hours:
tue wed thu fri sat 10am till 5pm
sun 11am till 5 pm

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The Museum Boymans Van Beuningen is the oldest and most known art museum of Rotterdam. F.J.O. Boymans donated his art collection to the city of Rotterdam. The municipality of Rotterdam founded the Boymans museum in the Schielandshuis in 1849.

The art collections was growing and in 1928 was decided that to build a new museum. Also D.G. van Beuningen donated his art collection to the museum. That's why the museum got the name Museum Boymans Van Beuningen.

The museum houses a rich collection, grouped into four wings: Old Art, the collection of Prints and Drawings , the collection of Applied Arts and Design and the Modern Art wing.

The museum has paintings of famous the old masters as Rembrandt, Rubens,Titiaan, Van Eyk and Breughel in the Old Art wing, artworks of Dali, Magritte, Monet, Kadinsky, Cezanne, Delacroix in the Modern Art wing. In the collection of the Applied Arts and Design there re many objects and furniture from different periods.

Opening hours:
10am till 5pm, at sundays from 11am till 5 pm

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The Dutch Architecture Institute (NAi) has one of the world’s largest collections of architecture. The NAi is housed in a striking building which is designed by architect Jo Coenen.

The NAi has five exhibition rooms with more than fifteen exhibitions. The first time I visited the NAi it was work related and I was overwhelmed getting such a great overview of historical and contemporary architecture. Huis Sonneveld, a modern villa from 1933, designed with light, air, space and colour is part of the NAi, being one of the best-preserved examples of the New Building School of architecture.

The NAi is more than a museum. It offers educational programs, has a large library with a study hall. In the bookshop you can find a huge selection of architecture books. There is also a nice museum café.

Opening hours:
tue, wed, thu, fri, sat: 10am till 5pm
sun: 11am till 5 pm

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It doesn't surprise that Rotterdam, the city with the biggest harbour of the world, has a maritime museum. This Maritime Museum 'Prince Hendrik', originally founded in 1874, got its striking location at the northern end of the Leuvehaven in 1986.

In the modern building are several exhibitions showing all facets of shipping and navigation. The partly interactive museum is interesting for kids and adults. A part of the museum collection came from the Dutch Prince Hendrik (1820-1879).

The museum has also a outdoormuseum in the harbour, the Leuvehaven. Here you can see historical ships like the traditional ship 'De Buffel' of the 19th century, the oldest Dutch wooden sailing ship and lots of shipping utensiles at the quay.

Opening hours: 10am till 5pm, at sundays 11am till 5pm.