The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Thanks to a large donation, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum will soon include a public sculpture garden featuring works by great modernists.
The Don Quixote Foundation is the Rijksmuseum’s single largest private benefactor. It is a philanthropic organization co-founded by Dutch aristocrat and venture capital executive Rolly van Rappard. It has provided millions of euros to enable the museum to stage its annual sculpture exhibition in the gardens outside. And now, the foundation has given the museum €60 million to create a new public sculpture garden directly across the Boerenwetering canal from the Rijksmuseum. The new garden will be situated on a sort of promontory among the canals, where the Carel Willinkplantsoen park currently sits. The buildings in the park will be repurposed and built out into pavilions open to the public. Several mature trees and new varieties of flowers will also be planted at the site. The contract for redesigning the existing structures has been given to Foster + Partners, the same firm overseeing the Queen Elizabeth Memorial in London’s Saint James Park. Meanwhile, the green spaces will be designed by Piet Blanckaert, a Belgian landscape architect known mainly for the Flanders Fields Memorial Garden in London.
The Rijksmuseum is primarily known for its collection of Dutch Old Master paintings, including works by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Jan Steen. Though not Dutch, other Old Masters feature prominently in the museum collection, including Rubens, Van Dyck, El Greco, and Francisco de Goya. Its modern art collection often does not get the attention it deserves. Some of the highlights include works by Karel Appel, Hans Arp, Marlene Dumas, Robert Mapplethorpe, Graham Sutherland, and even an Yves Saint-Laurent dress modeled after the work of Piet Mondrian. Many of the temporary exhibitions have attempted to draw attention to the museum’s modern and contemporary collections, yet its reputation as a hub for Old Masters has remained. Museum director Taco Dibbits referred to the project as “an unprecedented enhancement of the Rijksmuseum’s collection of 20th-century art”. When the project is completed, the Don Quixote Foundation also plans on loaning several works to the Rijksmuseum for display in the gardens. They include works by Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, and Henry Moore.
The new sculpture garden is part of an expansion project for the Rijksmuseum that also includes a satellite museum in Eindhoven. The gardens are estimated to open in the autumn of 2026.