The Stedelijk Museum & the Second World War

Amsterdam, October 21, 2014 — Next spring, as part of the 70th anniversary commemorations of Dutch liberation, the Stedelijk presents The Stedelijk Museum in the Second World War. The presentation is structured around work from the museum collection, accompanied by unique, previously unseen visual material. The results of the Stedelijk’s provenance research are also included, clearly presented and placed within a context. The exhibition brings together five fascinating storylines:

The 1930s: Art in Exile

The exhibition opens with Jewish artists, collectors, and dealers who were forced to flee their homeland after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. The Nazis had declared their art entartet, or “degenerate”. Willem Sandberg, then a curator, and Stedelijk director David Röell supported these immigrants by purchasing and commissioning artworks from them. For example, the museum bought work—including pieces by Paul Klee—from art dealer Herbert Tannenbaum who, with his family and gallery, found asylum in Amsterdam in 1937. In 1938, Sandberg commissioned Bauhaus artist Johannes Itten to design a canopy to hang above the grand staircase. In 1937, while Hitler’s Entartete Kunst exhibition traveled Germany to be derided by the German people, the Stedelijk embraced modern art, staging exhibits such as Abstracte Kunst (1938) and Parijse Schilders (1939).

A Bunker to Protect Art

After witnessing the horrors of the Spanish Civil War during a trip to Spain in 1938, Willem Sandberg immediately set about building a huge bunker in the dunes near Castricum. With this, the Stedelijk was the first Dutch museum to have a bunker. Before too long, other museums came seeking help: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, the Rijksmuseum (for a time, the bunker, a.k.a. “the vault” provided refuge for Rembrandt’s rolled-up Night Watch), the Frans Hals Museum, and the Lakenhal. The bunker also safeguarded the collections of private collectors including Van Gogh’s heirs and several Jewish collectors. Over 500 collections were eventually transferred to the bunker for safekeeping. After the war, in gratitude for the museum’s help, several collectors made spectacular gifts to the Stedelijk collection, including a work by Van Gogh and one by Kokoschka.

The exhibition also includes the logbooks recording the names of visitors to the bunker. Among them were museum staff and collectors, as well as members of the resistance movement and artists coming to seek inspiration. In 1941, H.N. Werkman, whose output had dwindled, accepted Sandberg’s invitation to view the Rembrandts and Vermeers concealed in the dunes; the visit rekindled his artistic fervor.

The Museum in Wartime

Between 1940 and 1945, the historic buildings on Museumplein were occupied by the Nazis; the square also held German bunkers. Other Dutch museums had been forced to close or were requisitioned as hospitals but the Stedelijk was open “as usual”.
In 1943, under German occupation, the Stedelijk was coerced into holding two propagandist exhibitions: Kunstenaars zien den Arbeidsdienst and De Jeugdherberg van morgen. But the museum also staged small resistance of its own by programming more patriotic themes such as Stad en land (1942), and quietly supporting those artists that had refused to join the Kultuurkamer (Reichs Chamber of Culture), and were thus deprived of their means of livelihood. Another example of resistance is the fashion presentation 150 jaar mode (1942). The poster prominently features the word moffen, a derogatory term for Germans, but had to be removed soon after the opening.
The Stedelijk also gave considerable amount of gallery spaces to the artists’ associations affiliated with the museum. Prior to the war, both Röell and Sandberg had sought to break ties with these associations (which blocked their aim of turning the Stedelijk into a museum for modern and contemporary art) but now they embraced them. As many of these artists were registered with the Chamber of Culture and their work had to be publicly exhibited, they presented a more palatable option to far worse German alternatives.

Sandberg used his design skills to forge identity papers for fellow resistance members, and helped prepare the attack on the Amsterdam Central Civic Registry Office on March 27, 1943. His co-dissidents, including artist Gerrit van der Veen, were captured and executed by firing squad. Sandberg evaded arrest, but was forced to spend the remainder of the war in hiding. It was during this time that he developed his Experimenta typografica, a series of unique graphic design experiments that, even today, is considered among the highlights of the Stedelijk Museum.

Immediately after the War

Sandberg, now the Stedelijk director, devoted one of the first exhibitions after liberation to the clandestine prints of his late friend, Werkman. In 1946, he hosted the exhibit Piet Mondrian, celebrating modern art’s outright triumph over the Nazi regime. The presentation included Victory Boogie Woogie, Mondrian’s unfinished ode to the end of the war. Sandberg, who was unable to buy the painting, had a copy made; for many years, it graced the walls of his office, as a vibrant symbol of freedom. The copy is still in the Stedelijk collection.
After the liberation, the Stedelijk was also involved in the international recuperation of looted art; Hans Jaffé, vice director under Sandberg, was a “Monuments Man” for two years. Sandberg also presided on various commissions for the design of many war monuments throughout the country.

Provenance Research

After the war, returning artworks to their rightful owners proved an almost insurmountable problem partly because, in attempting to protect Jewish collectors, Sandberg had deliberately kept sparse records of what belonged to whom in the bunker. Many collectors never returned and, in the chaos after May 5, 1945, the origins of artworks that ended up in the collection were shrouded in mystery for decades.
Like many other Dutch museums, the Stedelijk has conducted in-depth research as part of the national research project “Museum Acquisitions since 1933.” The screening identified 16 works that may not belong in the museum either because they were sold by collectors under duress or left behind in the museum after the war. Among them are works by Kandinsky, Matisse, and Jan Toorop.