Dutch national photo museum opens its doors in Rotterdam

The new home of the Nederlands Fotomuseum will officially open its doors on Saturday in a massive converted warehouse in Rotterdam’s Rijnhaven district.

The museum will house the national collection of over 6.5 million objects, one of the largest museum photography collections in the world, and provide space for exhibitions, workshops and educational programmes.

For the first time the museum will have a home that “fully does justice to the size, quality and ambition of our collection and programming,” says interim director Roderick van der Lee

“The building will enable us not only to display top-quality photography, but also to showcase our craftsmanship, research and conservation work to a wide audience. This is a huge step forward for the museum, for the city and for the international standing of Dutch photography.”

The building itself is one of the best-preserved examples of early 20th-century warehouse architecture in the Netherlands and was orginally designed as a storage facility for coffee from the Brazilian port city of Santos.

The nine-storey building features advanced climate and light control, including cold storage facilities that are essential for the long-term preservation of fragile photographic material. At the heart of the building, on the second and third floors, the museum showcases the collection and conservation work, something that was virtually hidden at its former location.

On the first floor, is the “gallery of honour”, a permanent exhibition showing the development of photography in the Netherlands, from the invention of the medium around 1839 to the current digital age.

A group of experts selected 99 iconic photographs based on their artistic and social impact, including work by Anton Corbijn, Dana Lixenberg, Violette Cornelius, Ed van der Elsken, Paul Huf, Rineke Dijkstra, and Erwin Olaf and visitors are invited to contribute ideas for the 100th photograph.

The museum collection consists of more than 175 archives of Dutch photographers, with millions of negatives, slides, prints and other photographic objects. Unique items include exceptional photographs from the former Dutch colonies.

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