At the Van Gogh Museum, follow the artist’s work alongside the family story that kept it together. Compare the dark, carefully staged Potato Eaters with later experiments in color, and notice how letters, drawings and works by contemporaries turn a celebrated name into a working artist in his time.
Quick facts
The Van Gogh Foundation owns the museum’s core collection; in 1962 it received more than 200 paintings, about 500 drawings and over 800 letters from the Van Gogh family, while the Dutch state undertook to establish and operate a permanent public museum.
Jo van Gogh-Bonger promoted Vincent’s work through exhibitions and publication of his letters; a 1918 account by art dealer J.H. de Bois says she declined a 1911 offer to buy the entire family collection, though no surviving offer or response is known.
The museum’s Rietveld building opened in 1973; Kisho Kurokawa’s elliptical exhibition wing opened in 1999, and the glass entrance facing Museumplein opened in 2015.
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Guide
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is more than a roomful of famous canvases: it is the result of a family’s long effort to keep Vincent’s work and working life in view. After Vincent died in 1890 and his brother Theo the following year, Theo’s widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, became custodian of the paintings, drawings and letters. She returned to the Netherlands with their infant son, Vincent Willem, and began making the art known beyond the family.
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