The third museum on the Museumplein, and the one people skip. The Stedelijk holds the Netherlands’ national collection of modern and contemporary art — the largest group of Malevich outside Russia, De Stijl, CoBrA, Warhol, Judd — in a nineteenth-century building with a white composite extension that Amsterdam has called the bathtub since the day it opened. From €22,50, 4.5 out of 5.
What the Stedelijk is
It opened in 1895 in a red-brick building by Adriaan Weissman and spent the twentieth century becoming one of the most influential modern art museums in Europe, largely because of one director. Willem Sandberg ran it from 1945 to 1963, hung the collection on white walls, put a restaurant and a library in the building, and bought work by living artists before anyone else in the Netherlands would. Much of what the museum owns today it owns because he moved early.
The 2012 extension by Benthem Crouwel added the entrance hall, the shop and the big temporary exhibition spaces underneath a seamless white shell that hangs over the Museumplein. Nobody is neutral about it. It is worth walking round the back to see the original façade the extension is attached to.
| Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam | |
|---|---|
| Address | Museumplein 10, 1071 DJ Amsterdam |
| Opening hours | Daily 10:00–18:00 |
| Price | From €22,50. Under-18s free |
| Rating | 4.5 out of 5, from more than 750 reviews |
| Collection | Modern and contemporary art and design, roughly 1880 to now |
| Strongest holdings | Malevich, De Stijl and Mondrian, CoBrA and Karel Appel, American pop and minimalism |
| How long | Two hours for the collection; longer with a big temporary show |
| Getting there | Tram 2, 5 or 12 to Van Baerlestraat. Two minutes from the Van Gogh Museum |
| Opened | 1895; the white extension added in 2012 |
Check availability and book the Stedelijk Museum
What is in the collection
The permanent display rotates, so treat this as what the museum owns rather than a guarantee of what is on the wall:
- Kazimir Malevich — the largest collection outside Russia, including the Suprematist works that arrived in Berlin in 1927 and never went home. This is the single most important thing in the building.
- De Stijl — Mondrian, Van Doesburg, Rietveld. The chairs and the paintings are shown together, which is how the movement meant them to be seen.
- CoBrA — Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille: the post-war Dutch reaction against all that geometry, painted fast and deliberately childlike.
- American post-war art — Warhol, Newman, Judd, Ryman. Sandberg and his successors bought them early and cheaply.
- Design and applied art — furniture, posters and graphic design treated as equal to painting, which is a very Dutch position and one of the museum’s real strengths.
- Temporary exhibitions — usually one large retrospective at a time in the underground halls, included in the ticket.
Is it worth it?
If you like twentieth-century art, yes, and it is the least crowded of the three big Museumplein museums by a wide margin. You can stand in front of a Malevich here on a Saturday afternoon with nobody behind you, which is not true of anything in the Rijksmuseum or the Van Gogh Museum.
If modern art is not your thing, this is the one to drop. At €22,50 it costs nearly as much as the Van Gogh Museum and it asks more of the visitor: there is less narrative and more looking. The 4.5 rating, slightly below its neighbours, mostly reflects people who came because it was there rather than because they wanted it.
A practical note: if you are doing two museums in a day, the Stedelijk works better in the afternoon. The collection is easier company when you are tired than a hundred and fifty Van Goghs are.
Practical points
- Open every day, including Mondays, which several museums in the city are not.
- Under-eighteens go free. Museumkaart is valid.
- Book a slot in advance during a headline exhibition; the collection alone rarely sells out.
- The building is fully accessible and there are lifts to every floor.
- It is two minutes from the Van Gogh Museum and four from the Rijksmuseum, all on Museumplein.
- The shop is one of the better museum shops in the city if you are after design books or posters.
The full list is on our Amsterdam museums page.
Frequently asked questions
From €22,50 for adults. Under-eighteens go free and the Dutch Museumkaart is valid. Temporary exhibitions are included in the ticket.
Daily from 10:00 to 18:00, including Mondays.
Modern and contemporary art and design. Its best-known holdings are the largest Malevich collection outside Russia, De Stijl including Mondrian and Rietveld, CoBrA, and American post-war art by Warhol, Newman and Judd.
About two hours for the collection, and longer if there is a large temporary exhibition on.
Only if modern art is what you came for. For a single museum most visitors get more from the Rijksmuseum or the Van Gogh Museum. The Stedelijk’s advantage is that it is far quieter than either.
Because of the 2012 extension by Benthem Crouwel — a smooth white composite shell that hangs over the Museumplein and, from most angles, looks like an upturned bath.
