Maritime Museum

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The street side of the museum. On the back, the actual display side, the museum borders directly on the Leuvehaven

The Maritiem Museum ( German  Maritime Museum ) in Rotterdam is one of the most important maritime museums in the Netherlands . It houses the second oldest maritime collection in the Netherlands , after the marine model maker in the Rijksmuseum .

history

The doors of the Maritime Museum of the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Yachtclub were opened to the public on February 15, 1874 . At this point, however, the collection already had a long history. This royal yacht club, founded by Prince Hendrik (1820–1879) , organized the first exhibition in the Netherlands on the subject of shipping and shipbuilding in 1851 . A model exhibition was set up in the same building the next year. In return, the prince donated a significant number of models, valuable books, drawings and paintings from his possession. Further donations from Rotterdam shipowners and shipbuilders allowed the collection to grow. However, the building devoured a lot of costs and so the yacht club was dependent on extra income. In addition to renting the rooms to Rotterdam companies, entrance fees for the model collection should help solve the problem. The opening is still considered the museum's date of birth.

After the prince's death in 1879, the yacht club was dissolved in 1881 and the city of Rotterdam took over the museum. In honor of the founder, the name "Prins Hendrik" was added to the museum. From 1881 to 1999 the museum was called the Maritime Museum “Prins Hendrik” Rotterdam. When the Mataró model was loaned to the museum in 1930 , the museum used an artistic impression of the model for years as an official identification symbol and bookplate .

The building

Maritime Museum (2019)

In 1949 the museum was given the first building in the Netherlands specially designed for a maritime museum. After a stopover, the museum moved into its current quarters in 1986 in the specially constructed building on Leuvehaven . This building, designed by the well-known architect Wim Quist, adapts to the intersection at an angle on one side and offers a long glazed front to the harbor basin on the other. This creates a triangular floor plan that seals off the noisy street. Inside, the exhibition is presented on galleries and staggered levels. This exhibition as a so-called vademecum with a timeless thematic concept, instead of a chronological order, aroused so many reviews, because precisely the historical objects that one expects in a maritime museum were not exhibited. That is why the Schatkamer and the Open Depôt were introduced.

Collections

In the course of time, over 1,400 ship models, 300 paintings and 5,000 drawings and prints, as well as 145,000 shipbuilding drawings, 2,000 maps, 20,000 book titles and around 80,000 photos have been accumulated. All objects can be researched and viewed via the MaritiemDigitaal database . In addition, outstanding museum objects are presented in the so-called Schatkamer and many others are visible through the Open Depôt as a study collection. The library is a reference library and the holdings are open access.

literature

  • Leo M. Akveld: Magnifiek Maritiem. Voorwerpen uit het Maritime Museum 'Prins Hendrik' sell hun verhaal . De Bataafsche Leeuw. Amsterdam 1992. ISBN 90-6707-281-8 .

Web links

Commons : Maritime Museum  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Meike Leyde: The museums of Wim Quist. Museum architecture of the Netherlands since 1970 . Gebr. Mann Verlag. Berlin 2011. ISBN 978-3-7861-2645-4
  2. ^ Research portal of all Dutch maritime museums. Number of hits on November 27, 2013 with over 233,000 objects.

Coordinates: 51 ° 55 ′ 3.1 ″  N , 4 ° 28 ′ 55.6 ″  E