The new Stedelijk Museum by Paul Cournet and Sabine Marcelis

With a collection of around 90,000 works from 1870 to the present day, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is the most important museum of modern and contemporary art in the Netherlands. To celebrate the city's 750th anniversary, the Museum has renovated its entrance spaces to make them more accessible and attractive to the entire community, with the aim of bringing an increasingly heterogeneous public closer to the world of art.

Architect Paul Cournet of the CLOUD studio signed the project. The project brings the historic sculpture garden back to its original location (maintained until the early 2000s), at the point that is now the gateway to the new wing of the museum inaugurated in 2012. The reconfigured spaces include reception facilities (a café, a restaurant, a reading space, a shop) and the new Don Quixote Sculpture Hall, an indoor exhibition hall financed by the private non-profit Don Quixote Foundation, which houses some of the main works in the permanent collection, from modern classics to contemporary icons by Henry Moore, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Niki de Saint Phalle and others. 

Paul Cournet

With the opening on 16 November of the new indoor sculpture hall, which is accessible free of charge to the public during the day and visible at night from the transparent front on Museumplein, the museum is increasingly configuring itself not only as a cultural pole but also as an epicentre of sociality.

“The refurbishment had to be both timeless and radical. We aimed to create a space that can express its inner qualities: being a sculpture hall as well as a public space for the city of Amsterdam” (in the words of Paul Cournet).

A jewel of design is also enriching the new space. For the occasion, renowned designer Sabine Marcelis, known for her skills in working with aluminium, designed the Stedelijk chair: “The Stedelijk is known for its renowned design collection. With the Stedelijk chair, I aimed to create a timeless design, as if carved from a single sheet of aluminium, complementing the Museum’s design entrance”.