The Overholland Museum in Amsterdam, which once housed a private collection consisting entirely of works on paper by contemporary American and European artists, has been closed since 1990, and the collection itself has remained out of the public eye. Now the museum building situated next to the Van Gogh Museum, is to be given over to the Van Gogh Museum as of 1 July for use as a library and documentation centre. The Overholland Collection itself will become a kind of nomadic museum, to be exhibited at various other museums throughout the Netherlands for extended periods.
During its brief existence, the Overholland was something of a connoisseur’s museum, more a place for art aficionados than for tourists, which may explain its ultimate failure. But the exhibitions, consisting mostly of works from the collection of Mr C. Braun, a Dutch-based German businessman, included notable surveys on artists such as Gerhard Richter and Arnulf Rainer to Ellsworth Kelly, Louise Bourgeois and Cézanne.
The new plan for exhibiting the collection, praised by Stedelijk Museum director Rudi Fuchs in a recent newspaper editorial, is to present the works together, as a single collection, yet within the contexts of various other museums. Mr Braun, however, who seems to relish his inaccessibility, would not provide further details. The first exhibition opens at the Teylers Musem in Haarlem on 30 November, and a subsequent exhibition is planned at the Kroller-Müller Museum in Otterlo in 1997.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'A very private museum gets more private'