Sightseeing III: Hoge Veluwe & the Kröller-Müller Museum

Last Sunday I got up bright and early to venture to the other side of the country to visit De Hoge Veluwe National Park, which at 55 square kilometers is the largest park in Holland. It is home to many animals including some endangered species of deer, and wild boars.

The park was originally the private property for a very wealthy German-Dutch couple, the Kröller-Müllers. He was a hunter, and she an avid art collector who wanted a museum to display her incredible collection, and hence the Kröller-Müller Museum was built in the heart of the hunting grounds. Around the 1930s the land and the collection of the museum was donated to the Netherlands and available to the public.

Since the park is so large – and most of it inaccessible by car – there are nearly 2000 white bicycles for guests to use, for free. Nearly every major European city has a bicycle sharing program of some kind, and I even think Vancouver was testing something out when we left, but this was the first time I've ever used a free public bicycle, and it was great! You just pick one up at the entrance, ride at your will, park it when you need to stop, and get on the bicycle closest to you when it's time to go again. Brilliant!


The Kröller-Müller collection is incredible. There are Mondriaans, Monets, de Chiricos, Legers, Picassos, and many other important regional artists who created avant garde Modern art, but it's largest draw card is the Van Goghs. The collection of Van Gogh paintings and drawings is second in the world only to the eponymous museum in Amsterdam, but there was one obvious advantage to seeing the Van Goghs at the Kröller-Müller: the the crowds are smaller to non-existent.

I liked to take the photo of the man in the orange pants:




Easily the most unique part of the Kröller-Müller museum is the sculpture garden. At the back of the museum there is a huge natural park filled with installations and sculptures of famous artists of the 20th century. Some of the sculptures were in plain sight, but others were somewhat concealed by the environment, and you had to search to find them, like this rock wall in a forested area.



The one below was one of my favourites. Sitting in it's own pool of water and designed to catch even the slightest breeze, this object was continuously spinning and moving like a swan.




Another of my favourites was Kenneth Snelson's needle tower. Constructed using only cable, tubes and geometry, it is a freestanding tower that appears equally solid and fragile.


And when you stand directly beneath it and look up, this is what you see:


I spent hours at the museum, and it's my new favourite (although I sill love the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.) It's not so easy to get to, but if anyone ever has the opportunity, I couldn't recommend it more.

Afterwards I jumped on a bicycle and pedaled for about 25 kilometers of the huge park. The landscape changed so much during this time.


There was wooded areas,


marshland,
meadows,


and sand dunes? What the!


Wide open spaces of nature void of people is not what generally comes to mind when I think of Holland, but it was really nice to be by myself in nature for a change.

(Luckily I didn't see any wild boars, or I probably would have had a heart attack.)