Museum JAN and the Cobra Museum of Modern Art are showcasing the art treasures of the Municipality of Amstelveen in the exhibition Collected for Amstelveen – the municipal art collection. Over the past seventy years, the municipality has assembled a leading collection of visual arts. This versatile collection is now presented to the public for the first time and is free of charge for all residents of Amstelveen.
The municipal art collection
Around 1955, the town council of Amstelveen started to collect visual art, initially without a specific purchasing policy. The choice of particular works or artists depended heavily on the available budget and the administrators involved. The town council commissioned or bought directly from artists, galleries and the former exhibition centre Aemstelle. A lot of cutting-edge art has been collected in the past seventy years, which the Amstelveen museums are now eager to present.
Exhibition in Museum JAN
Museum JAN is showing a selection from the so-called Topographic Atlas. From 1958 onwards, the town council commissioned artists to record the rapidly changing landscape in and around Amstelveen. At that time, Amstelveen was the fastest growing municipality in the Netherlands: farmlands, polders and characteristic buildings were disappearing to make way for new developments. This resulted in a collection of watercolours, drawings, photographs and some paintings. The collection grew steadily in the 1960s, but came to a standstill in the 1970s. A new start was made in 1985. This time the town council opted for photography.
In the twenty-first century, the Topographic Atlas is once again being supplemented in a contemporary manner. The exhibition in Museum JAN features three new works by contemporary artists who have responded to the present landscape of Amstelveen. Artists Jaehun Park (South Korea, 1986), Mitchell Thar (United States, 1991) and Yana Naidenov (Mozambique, 1988) have visualised Amstelveen with digital sculptures and physical installations.
Jaehun Park, Fluidic City, 2022
Exhibition in the Cobra Museum of Modern Art
At the same time, the Cobra Museum of Modern Art is showing a selection of works from the depots of the municipality of Amstelveen. Nationally as well as regionally acclaimed artists are represented in this selection: ranging from Eugène Brands to Jaap Egmond and from Melanie Bonajo to Gerard Schäperkötter. These commissioned, purchased and donated works of art - dating from the 1960s to the present - provide an insight into the municipal art policy.
The Cobra Museum also shows a contemporary reflection on the municipal art collection. Johannes Verwoerd Studio has created a digital depot by means of augmented reality in which you can see the artworks from the collection that are not on display.
Find out more about ‘Collected for Amstelveen’ in the Cobra Museum of Modern Art