Sightseeing 1: Gemeentemuseum

Time is cruising along and we have been in The Hague for nearly eight months, meaning there's only three left. It's disappointing to to admit that although we've been excellent tourists and explored many foreign cities, there's a lot of things in this city that we haven't seen or done yet. Doesn't that it always happen that way?

I've made it a priority to try to do something different every weekend until we leave, as a way to cross some items off the big, long to-do list. Ross is currently in full swing with his grad project, which gives me a great excuse to go out and explore on my own, and look at some of what I've previously overlooked.

Just down the street from where we live is a cluster of museums, The Gemeentemuseum, the GEM, the Foto Museum and the Museon, which are – respectively – the City Museum, the Museum of Contemporary art, the Museum of Photography, and I don't really know what the Museon is but I think it's something like Science World.

So, I decided to start my mission at the Gemeentemuseum. This is the home of a huge collection of Piet Mondrian's work. But this year the entire collection is on loan in Germany, so that kind of sucks. People always speak so highly of this building's architecture and I've never really understood why. With it's yellow water-stained brick exterior, I thought it kind of looked like a gross reptile.


But then I went inside, and I realized I was so wrong. This building is so exciting!


Primary colours, black and white, rectilinear lines, 90° angles . . . if you're familiar with Mondrian's work you would recognize the architecture as a compliment to the visual forms found in the artist's later work; I couldn't imagine a more appropriate building to house the de Stijl collection. The hallways and staircases featured exciting installations, such as these murals by Sol LeWitt.


Walking through the gallery was really fun.


I was impressed! There was lots of work by artists that I haven't really seen before, such as Nan Goldin and Gerhard Richter, and this one:


I instantly liked this gigantic photo light box because it looked like Vancouver, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I had to read the credit before I realized whose work it was. Duh. Jeff Wall. Shameful! I can't believe I had to go all the way to The Hague to see work by one of Vancouver's most famous artists.

Although the Mondrian collection is in Germany, they still kept the jewel of the crown: Victory Boogie Woogie, the last piece the artist created before he died.


Then I got kicked out because the museum was closing. I'm going back today because there's a huge exhibition of Lucien Freud's work that I didn't even get to. Lesson learned: don't overlook what's just down the street!