A museum in the middle of a quiet forest, one of the world’s greatest collections of Van Gogh is here.
Date of visit: 30 October 2015, weather: sunny
The Kröller-Müller Museum.
世界的なゴッホのコレクションが集結していることで知られる「クレラー・ミュラー美術館」。ここへの訪問は長年の夢でした。これまでなかなか機会に恵まれず訪れることができないでいましたが、ついにその夢が叶う日がやってきたのです。
“The Kröller-Müller Museum was created by Elena Kröller-Müller during her lifetime. The collection is based on the 11,500 exhibitions that her husband Anton Müller acquired between 1907 and 1922. This number is the largest private collection of its kind in the 20th century.
The Kröller-Müller Museum was inaugurated in 1938. The original model of the museum was designed by the Belgian architect Henri Van de Velde. A new annex, designed by the Dutch architect Wim Quist, was added in 1970.
この美術館の主要なコレクションは、なんといってもゴッホ。[highlight]「夜のカフェテラス」「アルルの跳ね橋」[/highlight]といったゴッホの代表作を含むおよそ90もの作品を所有しているようです。それ以外にも、モネ、スーラ、ピカソ、モンドリアンといった画家の作品もあります。庭にはロダンやムーアの作品も展示されています。主に19世紀後半から20世紀にかけて活躍した偉大な芸術家の作品が数多くある世界でも有数の美術館の一つに挙げられると思います。
公式サイト：クレラー・ミュラー美術館 http://krollermuller.nl/jp
It is such a wonderful museum, but the bottleneck is its location.
オランダはさほど広くない国とはいえ、たとえレンタカーを借りていてもどの主要都市からも遠いため行きづらいのです。計画が立てづらいです。長年来れなかったのもこの地理的な理由によります。しかし、今回はここをメインに観光ができるよう日程を工夫しました。
A vast national park
About an hour and a half after leaving Gouda, we arrived at the forest where this museum is located.
ここは「デ・ホーヘ・フェルウェ国立公園」というとても広い公園になっています。敷地内にはクルマのまま入ることができますが、入り口で車専用の入場券を買わなければいけません。ここで、合わせてこの公園内にあるクレラーミュラー美術館をはじめとした施設の入場券をセットで買えます。
After purchasing your ticket, you will enter the forest which is very beautiful with autumn leaves.
A vast site, slow driving is a rule, but by car, I arrived at the parking lot near the Kröller-Müller Museum in less than 5 minutes from the entrance. Parking here is free because I already paid the entrance fee.
By the way, they seem to have bicycle rental service in this park. It would be fun to rent a bike and walk around the park all day long. There were a lot of families who brought their own bicycles and enjoyed cycling.
Finally, inside the museum.
Now, we’re off to the museum, our main goal.
Show your already purchased ticket at the entrance and go inside.
There were Japanese tourists, so perhaps it is a standard route for tours. We heard later that our parents also visited here three years ago.
The museum has a collection of many artists, but the first and foremost is Van Gogh. We immediately went to the Van Gogh exhibition room.
Even from a distance, you can easily see that they are all masterpieces. There were not so many people, so it was easy to appreciate. Photography is OK, but flash is not.
Below are a few Van Gogh works. The most popular was still this work “Cafe Terrace at Night”. It was the most crowded. However, it was only a few people, so you won’t have any trouble to see it.
Next is the “Drawbridge of Arles”. I don’t think there were many people looking at this place. It may be especially famous in Japan.
The Sower, which shares the same name and was inspired by Millet’s Sower, is one of the first works you’ll see when you step into the Van Gogh Gallery.
The other Van Gogh works were also of very high quality. I can only say that Mr. Kröller-Müller has a wonderful eye for selection.
As for the works of other artists, as I mentioned above, there were works by Monet, Seurat, and Picasso from the Cubist era. I think there were also some works by Braque. I was surprised by the high quality of all of them.
Now, this museum is also attractive because the explanation is simple and polite.
On another wall, there was an easy-to-understand and organized chronology of Van Gogh’s art sales. It was a very good infographic.
It is a wonderful museum that is worth visiting even if you are not a Van Gogh fan. It was a dream come true for many years and I was very emotional.
By the way, there are good works in good places. To be able to visit such a museum is truly the best part of traveling in Europe. Thinking about it, I remembered how I got interested in traveling to Europe, because I wanted to have this kind of experience. This was the starting point.
Other facilities in the park
It was one o’clock in the afternoon when we finished our fulfilling visit to the museum. We were hungry, so we had lunch at a buffet restaurant in another facility in the park. It was a car ride to here. After all, it is a large site.
Today’s lunch was a salad buffet.
A kind of Dutch crepe that I don’t understand. It is a style of eating stewed meat with crepe. I wonder if it is typical in Holland. The taste was not so good.
This restaurant is a buffet style, but most of the main dishes are made to order. When you order, you are given a machine with an alarm like this, and after paying once, you wait at your seat for a while. When the food is ready, this alarm goes off and you have to go to the counter to get it again.
I’m not sure if these machines really work overseas, but this time it was fine (laughs).
After the meal, we visited one more church at the end. From a distance, we saw a building that looked like a church.
この内部を見学するにはガイドツアーに参加する必要があります。実は入口の時にガイドツアーも申し込んでいたことが後でわかりました。しかしゆっくり美術館を鑑賞してしまったので、指定された時間を過ぎていたのでした。無念。
Then we departed from De Hohe Fellwe National Park.
この日の観光はこれまで。ここからおよそ3時間かけて再びドイツへ、ハノーファーを目指します。ここで友人と落ち合う予定。時間間に合うかな。（続く）
