Holidays 2013, Netherlands and Belgium pt 9 : Amsterdam - The Arts (pt 1).

Continuing on my irregular blog posts about my holiday late last year to the Netherlands and Belgium are a couple of posts on the art I saw. During my visit to Amsterdam, I went to a handful of beautiful galleries and museums. The Rijksmuseum, which is the State Museum, was one such museum. It is such a beautiful building and has a huge and varied collection. As I love modern art, I was a little disappointed with it's small modern art collection, but that is ok, as I later visited the Stedelijk Museum. This was a favourite of mine, as it is a museum of modern art and had a lovely collection. I could have stayed there forever! In fact, if I ever visit Amsterdam again, I will definitely revisit the Stedelijk Museum.

 Being in Amsterdam, of course I had to visit the Van Gogh Museum! Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed with the pieces on show. I much preferred my visit to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris in 2010 and the beautiful Van Gogh paintings I had seen there. On that same trip overseas, on my way back home, I stopped off at New York and went to the  Museum of Modern Art, where I saw some more beautiful Van Gogh's!  As such, I shouldn't really complain. It wasn't all art museum's though, I also visited Anne Frank's house and yes, I became emotional! 

In the next blog post I will talk about some of the photographic galleries/museums I visited.  Below are some photos from some of my visit's to the museum's mentioned above. I was too overwhelmed at the Frank House to take any photographs and from memory, you may not have been allowed to.


Images from the Rijksmuseum:

Looking through the coloured glass panels at some structural part of the building.. yes I know, I should have been looking at the art that surrounded me, But I can't help myself:

Some famous painting everyone wanted to see...something about Night Watchmen. I can never understand the queues for certain images (which we are all told are 'masterpieces' and we must see them), while so many other beautiful images are left with no one appreciating them...

I was drawn to something  that caught my eye in the stairwell, but I can't recall what it was I photographed:

Images from the Stedelijk Museum:

I have posted this image on my tumblr account and titled it:
 'The moment the viewer of art, becomes art.'

This next one was also recently shared on my tumblr account: 'Above us, around us, within us'

Images from the Van Gogh Museum.

I was taking photos of the details of the building, the lighting, corners, parts of the framing that held the paintings/exhibits and was told by security to stop because it was not allowed. I explained what I was doing, but to no avail. Still I managed to snap a few things before they had spoken to me.

All photographs copyright matthew schiavello 2014