Rijksmuseum Twenthe
Encyclopedia
Enschede
Enschede , also known as Eanske in the local dialect of Twents, is a municipality and a city in the eastern Netherlands in the province of Overijssel and in the Twente region...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, was founded in 1927 by textile industry Baron Jan Bernard Van Heek. He donated his own private collection and the museum building to the government, thus making it a national museum.
The museum is situated in the quarter of Roombeek, 10 minutes on foot north-east from the railway station. It has a small gift shop and a cafe, but only poor car parking facilities, so visitors are advised not to come by car.
Throughout the decades, the museum has become focused on 18th century art as well as contemporary works, with the collection of Art & Project
Art & Project
Art & Project was Amsterdam's leading contemporary art gallery in the 1970s and eighties, as well as the name of an influential art magazine published by the same gallery between 1968 and 1989.-The gallery:...
, a former art gallery owned by Geert van Beijeren and Adriaan van Ravesteijn, as well as a large collection of animal paintings by Wilhelm Kuhnert, Carl Rungius
Carl Rungius
Carl Clemens Moritz Rungius was a leading American wildlife artist. He was born in Germany though he immigrated to the United States and he spent his career painting in the western United States and Canada...
and Bruno Liljefors
Bruno Liljefors
Bruno Andreas Liljefors was a Swedish artist, the most important and probably the most influential wildlife painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century...
. The museum also owns a large collection of 17th century (Ruisdael) and 18th century works, medieval books and religious objects, and some paintings of late 19th century Impressionists. The collection of 20th century art is also important (Karel Appel
Karel Appel
Christiaan Karel Appel was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s...
, Armando
Armando
The name Armando may be in reference to:* Armando , the name used by Dutch artist Herman Dirk van Dodeweerd* Armando , studio album by rapper Pitbull* Armando , writer at Daily Kos...
). One wing of the museum is used for temporary exhibitions of mostly modern art. It is the largest art museum in the east of the country.
In 1996, the museum became a private organisation in the form of a foundation.
In 2000, the fireworks disaster or vuurwerkramp did extensive damage to the building, but the collection of art was completely unharmed. The museum closed for nearly a year to do repairs.
From 2006–2008 the museum shows parts of the collection of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum
Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam or simply Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, located on the Museumplein. The museum is dedicated to arts, crafts, and history. It has a large collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age and a substantial collection of Asian art...
, especially art from the 18th century.