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Nostalgia and pragmatism: Architecture and the new stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Wouter Davidts Online Publication Date: 01 April 2008 To cite this Article: Davidts, Wouter (2008) 'Nostalgia and pragmatism: Architecture and the new stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam ', Architectural Theory Review, 13:1, 97 111 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/13264820801918314 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13264820801918314

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Nostalgia and Pragmatism: Architecture and the New Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam*
WOUTER DAVIDTS

In April 2007, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam nally began the construction of a new extension, designed by the Dutch rm Benthem Crouwel Architects, after seventeen years of internal and public controversy. In the context of a global enthusiasm for museum refurbishment or renewal, this article analyses the new building for the Stedelijk Museum and asks if it will bring about the long-awaited salvation. Via a detailed analysis of a report of 2003 on the future of the museum on the one hand and of the building brief on the other, the article demonstrates that the new extension of the Stedelijk is not so much aimed at dening a new and challenging museum typology, but is plagued by both pragmatism and nostalgia about a glorious period in its history, epitomized by the charismatic museum director Willem Sandberg.

Introduction
Dont push me cause Im close to the edge Im trying not to lose my head. (Grandmaster Flash, The Message, 1982) For some time, the international museum community has been aficted by what Stephen E. Weil aptly labeled in the mid 1990s as an edice complex.1 In the last decades, just about every museum of some stature has at least once renovated, rebuilt, extended or added to its existing building patrimony. No museum seems to be able to resist the pervasive urge to expand, grow and renew its architectural premises. The option to preserve a museum in a xed state has little or no charm, and gains no important media attention. When, Weil ironically asked, was a museum
Corresponding author: Wouter Davidts, e-mail: wouter.davidts@ugent.be ISSN 1326-4826 print/ISSN 1755-0475 online 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13264820801918314

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director last honored for a twenty-year record of consistent resistance to every expansionary impulse?2 After all, building plans for museums create high expectations, present an exhilarating challenge, and offer an opportunity for heroic achievements at both the board and staff levels. Architecture, so we are made to believe, enables institutions to break new ground, not merely in the literal sense. The countless plans for renovations, additions and extensions are rarely marked by the mere ambition to expand the facilities and to provide the museum with supplementary space. Quite the contrary, every major building campaign is coupled with the ambition to tackle the museum institution as well, on both a micro and macro level. Architecture is taken up as the appropriate medium to rethink and remodel both the hosting institution as well as the global concept of the museum. With a new building, a museum is not only expected, as Glen D. Lowry put it at the start of the building campaign of New York Museum of Modern art, to fundamentally alter its space, but to present a blueprint for a museum of the future as well. But what are the results of this general quest for fundamentally new spatial concepts for the museum? From the Neue Staatsgalerie, the Groninger Museum, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Milwaukee Art Museum to Tate Modern, we have been regaled with the most diverse and spectacular architectural appearances, ranging from museums that look like hospitals, prisons, jewel boxes, spacecrafts, ofces, and even all sorts of shes. But has this architectural extravaganza offered a similar amount of thought-provoking institutional structures in exchange? Upon closer scrutiny of the kaleidoscopic collection of new museums and museum extensions of the last three decades, we must admit that, despite the euphoric, exhilarated tone of the discourse on museum architecture, very few genuinely innovative museum projects have been completed that have the same kind of combined architectural and institutional vigour as the Centre Pompidou. Major institutional aspirations do not always result in key architectural achievements. All too often, reality turns out otherwise, and economic, political and bureaucratic forces oblige institutions to scale down their desires to a more pragmatic level. The past building campaign of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is a good case in point. Widely held as one of the ve most important collections of modern and contemporary art, next to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London and the Guggenheim Museum and its different international branches, the Stedelijk has been oddly lagging behind in terms of architectural expansions and extravaganza. Its colleagues, however, all played key roles over the past decades. Whereas the Centre Pompidou (1977, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers) is commonly credited as the eminent start of the museum boom in the late 1970s, the Guggenheim in Bilbao (1997, Frank Gehry) caused what is now universally termed as the Bilbao effect at the turn of the century. The Tate Gallery in its turn transformed a derelict power station into its new branch, the Tate Modern (2000, Herzog and de Meuron), which soon turned out to be the most popular museum of modern art in the world.3 While the Museum of Modern Art in New York has extended no less than four times its original building (1939, Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone) in central Manhattan, almost doubling its oor space with the latest expansion (2004, Yoshio Taniguchi). In contrast, the Stedelijk Museum only extended its building
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once, with a small wing in at the back of the museum in 1954 (J. Sargentini and F. Eschauzier). In the past four decades, the museum continued to operate in its given building (1892-1895, A.W. Weissman). In Spring 2007, however, the Stedelijk nally commenced the construction of a new extension, designed by the Dutch rm Benthem Crouwel Architects. After seventeen years of tiresome struggle, during which two architects fell by the wayside, the museum nally embarked on the expansion of its premises. With this new scheme, the Stedelijk is believed to close a dramatic chapter in its history and to move swiftly into the future. But does the new building in fact provide enough reasons for optimism? Is this the architecture that will bring about the long-awaited salvation?

Back to the Top

The saga began in 1990, when director Wim Beeren launched the idea of an expansion of the building between the Museumplein and Paulus Potterstraat. Shortly before his retirement in 1992 he organized a limited competition. In March, 1993, a proposal by the Americans Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates was selected. Although Rudi Fuchs, who had succeeded Beeren in February, 1993, had formally promised to respect the outcome of the competition, in late 1994 he thanked Venturi for services rendered and brought in the Portuguese Alvaro Siza. After an exasperatingly slow design process and protracted deliberations lling seven years, Fuchs resigned in December, 2002. Just as he was heading out the door he obtained the approval of the Mayor and Aldermen for a signicantly slimmed-down and fundamentally altered version of Sizas design. The institution, on the other hand, remained behind, in total despair.4 June 21, 2003, was the turning point in the gloomy history of the new Stedelijk. On that day the Committee on the Future of the Stedelijk Museum, made up of Martijn Sanders, then director of the Amsterdam Concert Hall, Victor Halberstadt, Professor of Public Finances at the University of Leiden, and John Leighton, then director of the Van Gogh Museum, presented their report, entitled Terug naar de Top or Back to the Top. The Committee conrmed the Stedelijk Museums state of deep crisis. The institution was edging toward the point where it could no longer live up to the reputation its name carried.5 The conservation and administration of its collection was inadequate, the building was in a deplorable state, management left a lot to be desired, there was a total lack of vision, and the museum was plagued by a structural shortage of political support and nancial resources. The Committees devastating judgement concluded that, in 2003, the Museum has a rst-class but by now languishing collection, a building that has alas been seriously neglected, and a likewise demotivated staff. To put this dramatic situation right the Committee proposed a new mission for the Stedelijk on six fronts, with advice regarding the optimal use of the existing collection, the future exhibition policy, the balance between short-term exhibitions and collection presentation, the Museums public appeal, and the institutions reputation in art scholarship. The greatest concern of the Committee was that the Museum should recover the standing it once had, and once again grow to be a difcult, controversial and impudent, but thus also always dynamic, adventurous and stimulating institution. In short, their most important recommendation, as the Committee said
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themselves in the second sentence of the covering letter accompanying their report, could be summarized succinctly: Back to the Top. But this was certainly not their most direct piece of advice; that undoubtedly involved architecture. The plans by Siza that had been approved, the gentlemen wrote, did not t with the proposed aspirations and the concrete elements in terms of museal elaboration, area and nances which accompany them. The most important reason given for this is that at the time Siza was developing his plans there had never been a clear vision and aspiration for the Stedelijk Museum and a specic programme of requirements based on that, drawn up with the assistance of the expertise and knowledge of the staff.6 The consequences of this advice were not long in coming. In January, 2004, the design by Alvaro Siza was denitively consigned to the wastebasket by Mayor and Aldermen.7 At the same time, on the advice of the Committee, a new start was made, with a new programme of requirements, this time drawn up in close cooperation with the staff of the Stedelijk Museum. That package of requirements was ready in June, and ve architectural rms were invited to present a draft scheme for the expansion.

Back to Willem Sandberg

It is striking that both documentsthe 2003 Terug naar de top (Back to the Top) report and the 2004 programme of requirementsare rife with words that refer to crisis and recovery. The 2004 programme of requirements, however, also strikes a nostalgic note. The introduction, Eenheid in Tweevoud (Unity in Duality), written by the Dutch essayist and architecture critic Max van Rooy, is entirely pervaded by the golden age of the Stedelijk: Unpredictable hub of cultural life: that is the position that the Stedelijk Museum wants to recapture in the coming years.8 Moreover, even more than the Committees report, the programme of requirements makes clear what the benchmark for that glorious past was: the directorate of the charismatic Willem Sandberg. After all, it was Sandberg who saw the Stedelijk grow into a dynamic Valhalla of modern art in the years between 1945 and 1962. Van Rooy tells us that the revolutionary tone of the Stedelijk Museum was established when in a poem [Sandberg declared] his museum a focus of life. Although his successors have each left a very personal stamp on the vital house for modern art, it is Sandbergs scintillating avantgarde spirit that once put the Stedelijk at the centre of the contemporary art world.9 According to Van Rooy the future of the Stedelijk will be assured when it regains the qualities of its heyday: exciting, controversial, trend-setting, adventurous. The public and artists must be given good grounds for a new love affair. The museum will again become an inspiring meeting place for all Amsterdamnot just everyone who loves the visual arts and design, but also those who fall for the vain mix of fashion and design that is called lifestyle will feel its attraction. A rendezvous at the Stedelijk must again become the thing to do.10 At the point where the programme of requirements translates the Committees aspirations into concrete guidelines for architecture, however, the veneration of Sandberg takes a strange twist.
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Respect for what the latter bequeathed to the Stedelijk as a building seems to be inversely proportional to the regard for his role in the growth and development of the Stedelijk as an institution. Suddenly the Sandberg nostalgia vanishes, and everything revolves around the building by Weissman. To be sure, in the points of departure for the renovation of the old building rubric of the programme of requirements we read that, after it was established in 1895, there is one period in which the museum underwent radical adaptations, the underlying motives of which have dened the development and position of the museum: the Sandberg era. But what is held to count as these adaptations turns out to be rather limited: merely Sandbergs changes to the interior of Weissmans Dutch neo-Renaissance building. Only these small interventions are considered to be intrinsic to the history of the Stedelijk and its reputation for being in the vanguard and are therefore included in the monument. However, what Sandbergs early interventions actually consisted ofsuch as painting the brickwork in the stair hall white, removing the wainscoting and introducing light wall coverings in the galleriesgoes unmentioned, and is absolutely not interpreted historically. The authors merely remember the image of airy, austere galleries and pellucid light. This, however, doesnt inhibit them from suggesting a detailing in the spirit of the Sandberg period for the restoration and renovation of the various exhibition galleries. What is more, the programme of requirements bluntly decrees that all in-lls and later extensions must be demolished. Any survey of how, where, when and at whose initiative the museum building was modied, is lacking.11 The only extension which is mentioned is the new wing that Sandberg built on the Van Baerlestraat (1954, J. Sargentini and F. Eschauzier) (Fig. 1). About this so-called Sandberg Wing, the programme is rather terse: [it] must be demolished. The reason for its demolition is summed up in two astounding sentences: This building is insufciently functional and is in a poor structural state. Maintaining it would not be justied, and moreover the limitations its presence places on plans for new construction are too substantial. In the introduction, Van Rooy is equally blunt. The Sandberg Wing, he states, is another story. It was intended as an expansion of the exhibition space, but because of its long glass facades it has never functioned optimally as such. In architectonic terms the wing is also no high-ier, and this, added to its poor structural condition, justies demolition. Based on purely practical arguments, and without the least acknowledgment of its architectural, cultural or art-historical signicance, a crucial token of the Stedelijk Museums architectural past is discarded. As Amsterdams Department of Monuments and Archaeology, however, had already pointed out as early as May, 2004, in doing so the Stedelijk was employing a blinkered denition of the concept of old building. After all, not only Weissmans building, but also the adaptations and expansions under Sandbergand certainly the Sandberg Wingcan be considered essentialand internationally respectedcontributions to museum architecture.12 With its open oor plan and windows from oor to ceiling the expansions discrete volume was undeniably a product of Sandbergs innovative vision of a democratic, accessible and living museum. The 1954 wing, which he later invariably labeled as his experimental model of a new museum, was at the same time an early architectural expression of the ideology of exibility that would become popular in the 1970s, and would reach its climax in the Centre Pompidou (Fig. 2).13 In particular, the
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Figure 1 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, exterior view of Sandberg wing, 2004. (Photo: Jean-Pierre Le Blanc).

Figure 2 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Interior view of the exhibition Modern Art Old and New in new Sandberg Wing, 1955. (Source: Cor Blok and Riet De Leeuw (reds.), De kunst van het tentoonstellen. De presentatie van beeldende kunst in Nederland van 1800 tot heden, Amsterdam, Meulenhoff, 1991, p. 129).

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diagrammatic articulation of the planbrilliantly rendered by the illustration accompanying Sandbergs text Museums at the Crossroads in the 1979 book Museum in Motion?was pioneering for its time (Fig. 3). Like the artwork in a collection or the books in a library, buildings are an indispensable part of an institutions patrimony. The memory of the museum not only takes shape in the collection, but also in and through architecture. All too often ambitious plans for renovation or extension are at the expense of this architectural heritage. As Victoria Newhouse once correctly suggested, museum trustees, directors and staffs have repeatedly done things to their buildings that would be unthinkable if applied to their collections.14 Still, it doesnt have to be that way. The recent renovation of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (Robbrecht and Daem, 2003) proves that expansion and functional demands do not necessarily result in symbolic loss. Robbrecht and Daems design succeeded in preserving the various historic fragments of a building that was at least as hybrid and silted up as the Stedelijk, restoring them and building on their strengths. The various wings of the Boijmans were analysed for their architectural value and spatial identities, in order to then enrol them within a programmatic and architectural master plan on the basis of this analysis.15

Architecture and the Museum of Tomorrow

If the programme of requirements shows hardly any interest in the Stedelijks architectural history, it gives just as little evidence of a vision of the role of the future architecture.16 Only two tiny paragraphs are devoted to the points of departure for the new building scheme. The rst paragraph deals with urban planning problems, arguing for a solution involving the landscaping of the Museumplein, and in particular for the accursed dog-ear, the grass-covered triangle of turf angling upward over the entrance to the Albert Heijn supermarket on the Van Baerlestraat behind the museum. Or, as Van
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Figure 3 Willem Sandberg, Schematic oor plan of new museum wing, 1954. (Source: Carel Blotkamp et al. (eds.), Museum in Motion?, The modern art museum at issue/ Museum in Beweging? Het museum voor moderne kunst ter diskussie, s-Gravenhage, Govt. Pub. Ofce, 1979, p. 330).

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Rooy imploringly says in the preamble, it must be possible to settle scores in an aesthetically responsible manner with this gesture of the park landscape, turning its back on the museum. The second paragraph deals with the function of architecture in relation to the museums functions. Here one cliche follows on the heels of the other. The new building is a building which must enable art to be shown to its fullest advantage, and where the public feels at home. The architecture is restrained and the detailing subtle and minimal. The architecture is in the service of the art. The visitor must be carried along the art in a natural way. Over against this reective atmosphere stands the fact that the new building also forms the beating heart of the museum, housing the entrance hall, the knowledge centre, the auditorium and the restaurant. An active atmosphere dominates in these places. Van Rooy phrases the relation between old and new in still another way: It would be ideal if the architecture critic soon says something to the effect of harmonious contrasts. According to Van Rooy, the architectural ensemble of the Stedelijk must exude unity in duality. Thus the Stedelijk does not touch on anything beyond a couple of predictable briefs for architecture. Any aspirations to engage architecture in the design of a truly innovative museum for tomorrow are absent. This might not come as a surprise, since the 2004 programme of requirements doesnt contain a balance of the current state of affairs in the international art and museum world, let alone a vision of the museum of the future. The contrast with the rhetoric of foreign institutions like the MoMA or the Tate Modern is simply enormous. When the latter began their building campaigns, the architectural project was explicitly connected with institutional ambitions. None of this is found in the Stedelijk. Architecture is not enrolled to reinvent the museum, but simply to let it recover. The unabashed Sandberg nostalgia combined with the terms referring to regeneration and restoration in the report and programme of requirements, clearly reveal that the Stedelijk Museum is above all narcissistically ridden with its own problems and wallowing in a sense of crisis.17 First and foremost, it wants to get its act together, and then to get back to the top.

Benthem Crouwels Bathtub

On September 2, 2004, the Dutch rm, Benthem Crouwel Architects, were proclaimed winners in the architectural competition, with a design that was rather quickly nicknamed the bathtub in the popular press (Figs. 4, 5).18 The contrast with the previous design by Alvaro Siza is considerable. In Sizas design a series of building volumes of various heights were grouped around an inner courtyard with gardens and patios. Benthem Crouwel trades this careful linking of introverted spaces for one freestanding sculptural volume, one spectacular Gestalt on the corner of Museumplein. Seen from a distance, their design does everything to score points. The building is a powerful and striking presence, yet neither too complex nor affected. It has a recognizable form that easily leaves an impression on ones memory. The building has everything to become a landmark, and with no further ado can be used as an icon and logo on letterheads, shopping bags and other merchandising. In relation to the Museumplein, the building makes a clear and simple statement: it provides a plaza that runs from inside the museum outwardan obligatory gesture since the Centre Pompidou. Finally, the bathtub is a specimen of structural innovation, which guarantees the requisite spectacle
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Figure 4 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Exterior view of extension from Van Baerlestraat, Benthem Crouwel Architects, 2006.

and technological bravura. At rst, thus, this design fulls all the standard requirements for a new museum. But apart from that striking exterior, there is little exciting about Benthem Crouwels actual museum scheme. To begin with, the architects have made little effort to put the old and new building in a productive rapport. The bathtub simply stands next to Weissmans building, distancing itself circumspectly by means of a light street (a glassed-over passage) which permits the underlying area to be appropriately rechristened as an orientation space. The old building emerges merely as a decorative facade in the open vestibule of the new extension. It requires an awful lot of good will to baptise this crude juxtaposition as a harmonious contrast. Finally, the interior of the new building is marked by a conformist and pragmatic spatial layout. The tub contains a medium-sized and a small gallery with top light, anked on the one side by a video space and on the other by an auditorium. The ofces for the museum staff are arranged along the full length of the roof. There are two medium-sized galleries, a large gallery and a series of spaces in the basement for technical services. The large public functions, such as the ticket desk, the information counter, the museum shop, the educational spaces, the restaurant and the knowledge
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Figure 5 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Exterior view of extension from Museumplein, Benthem Crouwel Architects, 2006.

centre (a new name for the library, analogous to the idea stores in Great Britain) are situated in the large, transparent lobby on the ground oor (Fig. 6). In theory, the combination of these programmes could produce a fascinating conglomerate, but in practice the parts are tidily delineated and laid out next to one another. Any interesting links between the distinct functions, exciting parcours or inventive spatial solutions are simply absent. The diversity of the programmes is not articulated in any meaningful manner, and one is left guessing at the respective functions and their various regimes of use. For the rest, it is difcult to conceive that the knowledge centre and its accompanying activities of research and reection are going to thrive in a hall simultaneously being used for shopping, dining, get-togethers and lounging. It is highly unlikely that the planned couple of carrels will offer any solace. The location of the knowledge centre in the glazed void of the vestibule is actually the most agrant example of undisguised Sandberg nostalgia. The by now completely hackneyed idiom of transparency, accessibility and receptivitybe it noted, translated by Sandberg himself into the idea of an open museum and materialized in the 1954 expansionis here recycled in a new packaging that is at the same time pragmatic and futuristic. It is incomprehensible that the core space of a museum that (according to the 2003 report) should place its collection back at the heart of its being, holds the middle between an airport terminal, a shopping mall and an administrative centre (Fig. 7).
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Figure 6 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Interior view of vestibule, Benthem Crouwel Architects, 2006.

Figure 7 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Interior view of vestibule, Benthem Crouwel Architects, 2006.

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What more is there to say about this design? Not much, or so it would already seem from the jurys nal report. In vain one searches for a thoroughly reasoned justication for their choice of Benthem Crouwel.19 While the other submissions are occasionally sharply criticized, the winning project only receives vague and platitudinous praise. Especially the conclusion is surprisingly simple: Benthem Crouwel has succeeded in giving shape to the concept of unity in duality in a superior manner. That is a question of architecture. Moreover, Benthem Crouwel has succeeded in turning the face of the Stedelijk toward the Museumplein. That is a question of urban planning. With this design, Benthem Crouwel have shown themselves masters of their metier in both elds. The realization of the Benthem Crouwel plan is something to be eagerly awaited.

Epilogue: The First Stone

On October 9, 2006, the Sandberg Wing was demolished, after the new director Gijs van Tuyl steered a bulldozer into it and Amsterdams Alderwoman for Culture, Carolien Gehrels, threw a stone through one of the windows (Fig. 8). That Gehrels gave this festive starting signal at the invitation of the Stedelijk Museum itself lent added signicance to her remarks afterwards. Sandberg himself was innovative, controversial, bursting with life. Thats why almost all of the people present threw stones.

Figure 8 Newspaper article on destruction of the Sandberg wing, Stenen gooien naar het Stedelijk (Throwing Stones at the Stedelijk), in: De Telegraaf, 10 October 2006.

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It was precisely out of respect for Sandberg, the innovator. It was perhaps somewhat provocative, but thats what the Stedelijk has always been.20 The demolition makes painfully clear what role and meaning the legacy of the legendary museum director is really being given within the overall renewal process. It is not Sandbergs wealth of ideas and innovative vision, but the atmosphere of excitement and controversy that was associated with the early years of his directorship that is important. It is Sandberg the instigator that the Stedelijk pines for. Whether the design by Benthem Crouwel will allow the museum to grow into the vibrant place that it was under Sandberg is deeply doubtful. Outside the bold gesture of the hanging tub and the massive canopy, the design has little to offer. But in the end that is not surprising; the 2004 programme of requirements had demanded little from the architecture of the Stedelijk anyway, beyond delivering the requisite oor and wall space. Fortunately architectural history has shown that use is often more decisive for a building than its architecture. While in most cases this turns out badly, for the Stedelijk that might still be reason for hope.

Endnotes
* 1 This is a revised and extended version of an essay that rst appeared in the journal De Witte Raaf, 128 (2007): pp. 15-17. Translation from Dutch to English by Don Mader. Stephen E. Weil, A brief meditation on museums and the metaphor of institutional growth, in Stephen E. Weil (ed), A Cabinet Of Curiosities: Inquiries into Museums and their Prospects, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, p. 42. Weil, A brief meditation, p. 42. Tate Modern, Press Release, Transforming Tate Modern: A New Museum for Twenty-First Century Britain, London, 25 July 2006, p. 6. The comparative annual visitor gures for 2005/6 that the Press Release offers are Tate Modern (4.1 m), MoMA New York (2.67 m), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2.5 m), Guggenheim New York (0.9 m), Guggenheim Bilbao (0.9 m) and SFMoMA, San Francisco (0.7 m). The rst reports about the possible expansion of the Stedelijk appeared in the spring of 1990. See Wim Beeren, Een mogelijke uitbreiding, Stedelijk Museum Bulletin (January, 1990): p. 6; Hugo Bongers, Nieuwbouw Stedelijk Museum, Stedelijk Museum Bulletin (February, 1990): p. 16. The other participants in the rst competition in 1992 were O.M.A (Rem Koolhaas), Wim Quist and Carl Weeber. For more information about this rst competition and the ultimate dismissal of Venturi in 1995, see, among others: Studie-ontwerpen nieuwbouw, Stedelijk Museum Bulletin (December 1992-January 1993): p. 11; Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen, Uitbreiding Stedelijk Museum: Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Stedelijk Museum Bulletin (March, 1993): pp. 30-32; Hugo Bongers, Uitbreiding Stedelijk Museum: Nieuwe ontwikkelingen, in Stedelijk Museum Bulletin (April, 1994): p. 50; Arthur Worthman, Het Stedelijk Museum: projectontwikkelaarscachet of undergroundkunst, Archis, 2, (February, 1993): pp. 2-5; Arthur Worthman, Exit Venturi, Archis, 1 (January, 1995): p. 16. For the situation surrounding the resignation of Rudi Fuchs, see, among others: Sven Lutticken, Stedelijk Museum, De Witte Raaf, 101 (January-February, 2003). Advies Commissie Toekomst Stedelijk Museum (Martijn Sanders (chairman), Victor Halberstadt & John Leighton), Het Stedelijk Museum: Terug Naar de Top (Back to the Top), Amsterdam, June 21, 2003. Since this report was only written in Dutch, all quotations in this essay have been translated. All further quotations are from this report, unless indicated otherwise.

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In 1994 the management consultancy Twijnstra Gudde assembled a programme of requirements that was rightly described by the committee as purely quantitative. See Twijnstra Gudde, Management Consultants, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam: Programma van Eisen voor de renovatie en uitbreiding van het Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, March 24, 1994. Despite the committees recommendation to wrap up the relation with Siza with regard to the existing plans in a respectful manner, the architect heard the news via the media. See Rob Gollin, Siza boos over breuk Stedelij: Architect overweegt juridische stappen, De Volkskrant, (Saturday, January 3, 2004); Anonymous, Architect Siza boos op Stedelijk en gemeente, NRC Handelsblad (Monday, January 5, 2004). Max van Rooy, Eenheid in Tweevoud, in City of Amsterdam, Project Management Bureau, Het nieuwe Stedelijk Museum. Ruimtelijk, functioneel en technisch Programma van Eisen. Ten behoeve van de locatie Paulus Potterstraat/Museumplein, Amsterdam (June 11, 2004): pp. ii-v. City of Amsterdam, Project Management Bureau, Het nieuwe Stedelijk Museum.

10 van Rooy, Eenheid in Tweevoud, p. 2. In his 1959 manifesto NU (Now), Sandberg argues that he is attempting to create surroundings where the vanguard feels at home . . . a real centre for present life. The museum needs to turn into a home for everything that will brighten the features of the face of our time, for every contribution to the form of the present . . . [for] all material of today, apt to build the future. It needs to become a place where people dare to talk, laugh and be themselves. See: Willem Sandberg, NU, Hilversum: Steendrukkerij De Jong & Co, 1959, p. 30. An expanded version of the manifesto appeared under the title musea op de tweesprong/museums at the crossroads, in: Carel Blotkamp et al. (eds), Museum in Motion?, The modern art museum at issue/Museum in Beweging? Het museum voor moderne kunst ter diskussie, s-Gravenhage: Govt. Pub. Ofce, 1979, pp. 321-331. 11 For a detailed description of the interventions by Sandberg, see the chapter Het tweede gezicht; het experimenteermodel van Sandberg, in Bureau Monumenten & Archeologie Amsterdam, Het Stedelijk Museum. Architectuur in dienst van de kunst, Amsterdam, 2004, pp. 33-37. 12 Bureau Monumenten & Archeologie Amsterdam, Het Stedelijk Museum, pp. 41-43. 13 When Sandberg expounded his ideas regarding the tasks, functioning and ambiance of a museum for contemporary or current art in the text Reexions disparates sur lorganisation dun muse dart e daujourdhui in the journal Art dAujourdhui in 1950, he observed in the margin that [c]es reexions ont ete ecrites par un conservateur de musee qui tache de les realiser dans un vieux batiment. He carried out several interventions on the old building to bring it up-to-date or to modernise it, but nevertheless stayed in a building that was an expression of a nineteenth century museum typology, both with regard to its architectural ambiance and its spatial arrangement. See Willem Sandberg, Reexions disparates sur lorganisation dun musee dart daujourdhui, Art dAujourdhui 2, 1 (October, 1950): n.p. Later, when Sandberg was a member of the jury for the architectural competition for the Centre Pompidou, he did not hesitate long before giving his vote to the project from Piano & Rogers. According to him, it simply fullled the dream about which I wrote in 1950 in the magazine Art dAujourdhui. See: Willem Sandberg, as cited in Ad Petersen & Pieter Brattinga (eds), Sandberg. een documentaire/a documentary, Amsterdam: Kosmos, 1975, p. 108. 14 See the chapter Wings That Dont Fly (And Some That Do), in Victoria Newhouse, Towards a New Museum, New York: Monacelli Press, 1998, pp. 138-189. 15 For this, see among others, Wouter Davidts, Robbrecht & Daem and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Architectural interventions so that things may overlap, Maandberichten Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (May 2003): pp. 2-7.

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16 Before the demolition the Amsterdam department for Monuments and Archaeology had already drawn the painful conclusion that, The only architectonic interest thus far appears to be the naming of an international star and the dismissal of other international stars. Bureau Monumenten & Archeologie Amsterdam, Het Stedelijk Museum, p. 41, note 8. 17 Three debates about the future of the Stedelijk were organised in 2002-2003. Reports of these debates are to be found in: Stedelijk Museum Bulletin, 14, 6 (2002); Stedelijk Museum Bulletin 16, 1 (2003); Stedelijk Museum Bulletin 16, 3 (2003). As Jorinde Seijdel recently demonstrated with her analysis of the policy plan 2006-2008, this lack of a broader perspective on the issues surrounding museums today is structural for the Stedelijk. See Jorinde Seijdel, Het is eenzaam aan de top. De toekomst van het Stedelijk Museum, Metropolis M, 1 (2007): pp. 64-70. 18 The participants were Herman Hertzberger Architecture Studio, Benthem Crouwel Architects, Henket & Partners Architects, Diederen Dirrix van Wylick Architects and Claus and Kaan Architects. The jurors were Wim Pijbes, Wim Quist, Maarten Klos, Max van Rooy, Toon Verhoef, Hans van Beers, Herman van Vliet and Sjoerd Sjoeters. The jury report explicitly states that the selection committee did not intentionally choose Dutch architects only. The ve rms were selected from over 40 applicants on the basis of unconditional suitability for the specic task in which new construction and renovation of the old building complement one another. See Jury Rapport architectenselectie Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (August 31, 2004). 19 For that matter, the jury report lls only three short pages, the rst of which is merely a recapitulation of the general points of departure. Although it is not stated, from its tone it appears certain that once again Van Rooy was approached to write this text. 20 Carolien Gehrels, as quoted by Hans van der Beek, Een Steen door de Geschiedenis, Het Parool, (October 13, 2006). The idea came from Marjolijn Broekhuizen, head of the Marketing and Communications Department at the Stedelijk.

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