If you associate big museums with big cities and Van Gogh paintings with the Van Gogh Museum, you might want to reexamine those assumptions.
Why? Well, about a hundred years ago, a woman built a unique modernist building in the middle of De Veluwe National Park and this is home to one of the most impressive modern art collections in the Netherlands.
Yes, we’re talking about the Kröller-Müller Museum — but do you know the story behind the woman who founded it?
Who was Helene Kröller-Müller?
The Kröller-Müller Museum didn’t come about in a very conventional way — probably because it wasn’t started by a very conventional person.
The woman who founded the iconic museum was Helene Kröller-Müller. Originally from Germany, Helene was an international in the Netherlands, relocating to the lowlands in 1888 — how relatable!
She moved for love… well, her father’s love since he was the one who picked her husband, a wealthy merchant who worked for her father’s company and later took it over.
The couple settled in Rotterdam, their business boomed, and Helene ended up becoming one of the richest women in the Netherlands. Okay, maybe not so relatable…
She lived in a time when most European women couldn’t study art and came from a family where her dad was much keener on picking husbands than supporting his daughter in getting a university degree.
Given this, the cards were stacked against Helene becoming an art connoisseur. Still, she developed an interest in philosophy early on and found that some of her fundamental spiritual questions could be connected to art.
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In 1905, she met Henk Bremmer, who became her advisor and helped her amass a truly spectacular personal art collection.
Helene’s vision — build a museum that everyone can enjoy
When we say spectacular, we mean spectacular. Her collection included works by the likes of Mondriaan, Signac, Redon, and Jan Toorop, to name a few.
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She was also one of the first collectors to recognise the then relatively unknown Van Gogh, labelling him as “one of the great spirits of modern art.”
For some time, she was perfectly happy collecting art for her private enjoyment. But after a while, that interest in philosophy started coming in handy, and she began to wonder about her place in the world as an art collector.
The wondering turned concrete in 1911 when she underwent a dangerous operation. She decided that if she survived, she would build a museum for the Dutch people.
This article exists, so you can guess that her operation was successful, and Helene proved herself to be a woman of her word.
The (first) Kröller-Müller Museum was born
Her husband bought a building in The Hague and Helene started exhibiting her collection with the main purpose being “the benefit and enjoyment of the community.”
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It was a time before Museum Cards, but you could still visit the collection for free — you just had to write to Helene and ask for a ticket.
But a small building in The Hague wouldn’t cut it for this collector. In 1921, she made plans to build a bigger museum on her country estate, which would later become De Veluwe National Park.
Gave it her all after losing it all
Unfortunately, Helene’s dreams of a bigger museum were rudely interrupted when the Kröller-Müllers lost a significant portion of their money in the 1920s.
But if Helene could beat early 20th-century gender norms, she could beat a little financial crisis.
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She managed to convince the Dutch Minister of Education, Arts, and Science that the state should take over the museum’s construction in exchange for her donating her entire art collection.
The Kröller-Müllers were slightly less generous when it came to their estate, though.
The Dutch state bought the land for a large sum of money and turned it into a national park — a great contribution to the country and to the Kröller-Müller’s finances.
The Kröller-Müller Museum as we know it today finally opened in 1938, becoming one of the first modern art museums in Europe. A year after her big dream came true, Helene passed away.
The Kröller-Müller Museum today: a unique wonder
So, if you find yourself in De Veluwe today, you can turn your nature getaway into a cultural outing as well.
The museum building, an odd mixture of De Stijl and modernist architecture, is tucked away among the national park’s trees, far from any of the other great Dutch museums in the Randstad.
It still houses one of the most interesting modern art collections in the Netherlands, the second-largest Van Gogh collection in the world.
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If it wasn’t for Helene’s recognition of the then-unknown painter, Van Gogh’s art might have never reached the status it has today.
Unfortunately, the museum doesn’t stick to Helene’s lovely tradition of giving out tickets for free — you now have to pay an entry fee for the park and the museum if you want to marvel at the collection.
But still, Helene had many odds stacked against her and yet, she made her museum come to life. If we adopt her mentality, we too can beat inflation and buy those museum tickets!
Have you visited the Kröller-Müller Museum before? Let us know how it was in the comments!
