A museum dedicated to the artist Piet Mondrian has been revamped to mark the centenary of the De Stijl art movement. Eleanor Mills finds out more from its director, Paul Baltus.
Mondriaanhuis (Mondrian’s House) in Amersfoort, just outside Amsterdam, was founded as a museum in 1994 and has recently been renovated to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the De Stijl art movement.
Piet Mondrian, the artist the museum is dedicated to, was one of the founding members of De Stijl, an avant-garde Dutch movement that began in 1917, co-founded with artist Theo Van Doesburg. It pioneered the use of a simplified range of colours and geometric form, often reduced to just black, white, yellow, red and blue.
Mondrian, along with his De Stijl compatriots, made paintings the world had never seen the likes of before. Mondriaanhuis closed in December last year and reopened on 7 March this year, Mondrian’s birthday.
The museum tells the story of the artist, from when he started out as an artist painting realistic landscapes – he was born in 1872, when impressionism was starting to be in vogue – to his seminal years in New York and the culmination of his artistic output.
Mondriaanhuis has reopened with a new multimedia concept and interior design. Here, its director, Paul Baltus, talks about the innovations and how to make abstract art accessible.
How would you describe the new-look museum?
Paul Baltus: The idea of the new Mondriaanhuis is based on the concept of an empty canvas. When entering the museum, visitors experience a bright, white space. Then, along the route through the museum, the canvas of Mondrian’s life is gradually filled with the artist’s stories and thoughts.
What are the highlights?
The main addition is a video installation in which Mondrian’s work is shown on 13 screens. His artistic development is described in a five-minute show and visitors can see how his work gradually changed from realistic landscapes to luminous scenes, then into abstract compositions with their characteristic lines and fields of colour. During the presentation, varying musical styles are heard, fitting the time and Mondrian’s musical taste.
Another addition is the New York room, where we have installed a transparent white cube that visitors can sit around. Artworks, historic fragments and soundbites of New York in the 1940s are projected on, in and outside the cube, so visitors see inside the artist’s head, as it were.
It all leads up to Mondrian’s masterpiece, Victory Boogie Woogie, painted in 1944 in New York, a work that was left unfinished due to the artist’s death the same year, but predicted the allied victory in the second world war.
What’s the most innovative aspect of Mondriaanhuis?
The multimedia concept represents a new approach in the use of film in a museum or heritage institution because the presentations become part of the story themselves. The screens of the video installations represent empty canvases – frames with black-rimmed, rectangular planes show videos of Mondrian’s work, so the projections seem to become his work.
The New York room is different with its transparent cube structure representing Mondrian’s inner and outer world, and switching seamlessly between the two. Eventually, the film leaves the canvas, enveloping visitors and the room in an all-encompassing immersive installation.
We used video mapping to project these picture stories onto these extraordinary canvases. We decided to use the universally understandable audiovisual language of images and music, without resorting to text or voice-overs.
How will you engage with a broad demographic?
For younger visitors, there are several activities such as a scavenger hunt, a DIY studio and workshops. Special museum lessons are given to primary school children and teaching material has been developed for primary school teachers, which has also been made available online.
Dutch houses are known to be tall and narrow. Is the museum wheelchair-friendly?
Mondriaanhuis is accessible to wheelchair users through the front entrance, using an access ramp. Inside the museum there is an elevator to make the venue accessible to everyone. The reconstruction of Mondrian’s Paris studio can be partially visited by wheelchair users. Visitors in wheelchairs can also take an attendant with them for free. Visitors with registered guide dogs are welcome.
What’s in your collection?
In addition to a small collection of its own, Mondriaanhuis has two larger collections on perpetual loan. Nine naturalist works from Mondrian’s early period are on show – landscapes and city views on long-term loan from the Esser collection. JFS Esser was a physician who owned one of the largest collections of Dutch modern art – in 1912, the collection comprised 800 works of art, including 80 by Mondrian, all from his early naturalist period.
Mondrian became one of the main protagonists of De Stijl. How is Mondriaanhuis celebrating the centenary of the art movement?
The Mondriaanhuis is the birthplace of Mondrian and a must-see for people who want to know more about the De Stijl movement. The museum tells the artist’s life story through modern and immersive multimedia rather than traditional museological techniques. There are lots of other things going on this year as part of the De Stijl programme in Utrecht and Amersfoort too.
For the full De Stijl programme
Project data
Cost €950,000 (£798,000)
Main funders Mondriaan Fund; KF Hein Fund; VSB Fund; PUG; Zabawas; Social Cultural Fund of the Amersfoortse Verzekeringen; Hendrik Muller Fund
Architect JDdV Architecten
Exhibition design, AV and multimedia Tinker Imagineers
AV hardware Phanta Visual
Lighting ATA Tech BV
Admission Adult €10; Children €8; Students €5
Mondriaanhuis (Mondrian’s House) in Amersfoort, just outside Amsterdam, was founded as a museum in 1994 and has recently been renovated to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the De Stijl art movement.
Piet Mondrian, the artist the museum is dedicated to, was one of the founding members of De Stijl, an avant-garde Dutch movement that began in 1917, co-founded with artist Theo Van Doesburg. It pioneered the use of a simplified range of colours and geometric form, often reduced to just black, white, yellow, red and blue.
Mondrian, along with his De Stijl compatriots, made paintings the world had never seen the likes of before. Mondriaanhuis closed in December last year and reopened on 7 March this year, Mondrian’s birthday.
The museum tells the story of the artist, from when he started out as an artist painting realistic landscapes – he was born in 1872, when impressionism was starting to be in vogue – to his seminal years in New York and the culmination of his artistic output.
Mondriaanhuis has reopened with a new multimedia concept and interior design. Here, its director, Paul Baltus, talks about the innovations and how to make abstract art accessible.
How would you describe the new-look museum?
Paul Baltus: The idea of the new Mondriaanhuis is based on the concept of an empty canvas. When entering the museum, visitors experience a bright, white space. Then, along the route through the museum, the canvas of Mondrian’s life is gradually filled with the artist’s stories and thoughts.
What are the highlights?
The main addition is a video installation in which Mondrian’s work is shown on 13 screens. His artistic development is described in a five-minute show and visitors can see how his work gradually changed from realistic landscapes to luminous scenes, then into abstract compositions with their characteristic lines and fields of colour. During the presentation, varying musical styles are heard, fitting the time and Mondrian’s musical taste.
Another addition is the New York room, where we have installed a transparent white cube that visitors can sit around. Artworks, historic fragments and soundbites of New York in the 1940s are projected on, in and outside the cube, so visitors see inside the artist’s head, as it were.
It all leads up to Mondrian’s masterpiece, Victory Boogie Woogie, painted in 1944 in New York, a work that was left unfinished due to the artist’s death the same year, but predicted the allied victory in the second world war.
What’s the most innovative aspect of Mondriaanhuis?
The multimedia concept represents a new approach in the use of film in a museum or heritage institution because the presentations become part of the story themselves. The screens of the video installations represent empty canvases – frames with black-rimmed, rectangular planes show videos of Mondrian’s work, so the projections seem to become his work.
The New York room is different with its transparent cube structure representing Mondrian’s inner and outer world, and switching seamlessly between the two. Eventually, the film leaves the canvas, enveloping visitors and the room in an all-encompassing immersive installation.
We used video mapping to project these picture stories onto these extraordinary canvases. We decided to use the universally understandable audiovisual language of images and music, without resorting to text or voice-overs.
How will you engage with a broad demographic?
For younger visitors, there are several activities such as a scavenger hunt, a DIY studio and workshops. Special museum lessons are given to primary school children and teaching material has been developed for primary school teachers, which has also been made available online.
Dutch houses are known to be tall and narrow. Is the museum wheelchair-friendly?
Mondriaanhuis is accessible to wheelchair users through the front entrance, using an access ramp. Inside the museum there is an elevator to make the venue accessible to everyone. The reconstruction of Mondrian’s Paris studio can be partially visited by wheelchair users. Visitors in wheelchairs can also take an attendant with them for free. Visitors with registered guide dogs are welcome.
What’s in your collection?
In addition to a small collection of its own, Mondriaanhuis has two larger collections on perpetual loan. Nine naturalist works from Mondrian’s early period are on show – landscapes and city views on long-term loan from the Esser collection. JFS Esser was a physician who owned one of the largest collections of Dutch modern art – in 1912, the collection comprised 800 works of art, including 80 by Mondrian, all from his early naturalist period.
Mondrian became one of the main protagonists of De Stijl. How is Mondriaanhuis celebrating the centenary of the art movement?
The Mondriaanhuis is the birthplace of Mondrian and a must-see for people who want to know more about the De Stijl movement. The museum tells the artist’s life story through modern and immersive multimedia rather than traditional museological techniques. There are lots of other things going on this year as part of the De Stijl programme in Utrecht and Amersfoort too.
For the full De Stijl programme
Project data
Cost €950,000 (£798,000)
Main funders Mondriaan Fund; KF Hein Fund; VSB Fund; PUG; Zabawas; Social Cultural Fund of the Amersfoortse Verzekeringen; Hendrik Muller Fund
Architect JDdV Architecten
Exhibition design, AV and multimedia Tinker Imagineers
AV hardware Phanta Visual
Lighting ATA Tech BV
Admission Adult €10; Children €8; Students €5