Museum JAN in Amstelveen celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. For this occasion, we are organising the anniversary exhibition Sparkling Glass - 30 years Museum JAN: an overview of the extraordinary glass collection. A true celebration of diversity in technique, form, and colour.
Origins of Museum JAN
As the director of the well-known Tomado factory (Van der Togt Massa-artikelen Dordrecht), Jan van der Togt (1905-1995) amassed a fortune. He collected everything he liked: international visual art and modern glass in particular. Especially after his retirement, his collection grew with works by Andries Copier, Václav Cígler, Ossip Zadkine and Sam Francis, among others. Together with artist and friend Jan Verschoor, he founded Museum Jan van der Togt (now Museum JAN) in Amstelveen in 1991. As director, Verschoor broadened and deepened the glass collection with pieces from the Netherlands and abroad. The glass collection of Museum JAN is now internationally renowned.
The collection
Van der Togt bought a lot of glass from the former Czechoslovakia, a region with a glass tradition dating back centuries. Both in the Czech Republic (Prague Academy of Art) and in Slovakia (Bratislava Academy of Art), the glass departments developed into independent branches around 1965, headed by Stanislav Libenský and Václav Cigler respectively. Under Libenský, artists focused on monumental glass, which was used in architecture. Cigler developed a geometric-abstract design language.
In this same period, the studio glass movement, which started in the United States, was gaining momentum. Up until then, glass had primarily had a utilitarian function, but now glass artists started building their own furnaces. From that moment on they were no longer dependent on craftsmen in the glass factories to execute their work: hence the name 'free glass'. In the Netherlands, this studio glass movement led to the formation in 1969 of the glass working group at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. This department has since developed into one of the most important glass academies in the world. In 1977, Willem Heesen built his own glass studio in Acquoy, in the Dutch province of Gelderland, where artists like Andries Copier, Lino Tagliapietra and Mieke Groot regularly came to produce their designs.
Van der Togt was particularly fond of the Slovakian cut optical glass by Václav Cigler, Lubomír Artz, Bohumil Eliáš and Pavol Hlôška, but on Verschoor's advice he also started buying the more sculptural and rougher works by Libenský, Gizela Šabóková and Aleš Vašíček. Typical for modern, international glass is that the container form of utilitarian glass (vase, jug, drinking glass) has more or less given way to free forms and glass sculptures.
Contemporary Dutch glass is also well represented in the collection, with work by Andries Copier, Willem Heesen and Bert Frijns. After the death of Van der Togt in 1995, Verschoor became director of Museum JAN. Under his leadership, the collection was expanded to include international modern glass by Julius Weiland, Tomoko Doi, Frank van den Ham, Barbara Nanning, and several spectacular glass sculptures by Bernard Heesen.
Museum JAN is home to many surprising treasures, even for those unfamiliar with glass art: from the sober aesthetics of Ritsue Mishima's work, the fascinating play of light in Peter Bremers' large bowl to the enchanting asymmetrical shapes and colours of the vases by grandmasters Tagliapietra, Copier and Heesen.
Donation and new publications
The exhibition Schitterend glas - 30 jaar Museum JAN will be presented in Museum JAN's renovated glass hall. The glass object 'Verre églomisé' by artist Barbara Nanning, which she donated in honour of this 30th anniversary, will also be on display.