By Breaking from its decades-long association with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia due to that country’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, the Hermitage Amsterdam Museum has rebranded itself and brought on new partners.
Director Annabelle Birnie announced on June 26, 2023, the new museum will be known as H’ART Museum as of September 1, 2023. Its new international collaborating institutions will be the British Museum in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Each will bring world-famous art collections to Amsterdam.
‘It’s an exciting new step for us, a contemporary and future-proof model,” Birnie said. “We are building on our experience in the international field and are now spreading our wings. Our programming will be multi-voiced reflecting the times we live in. We will show major art exhibitions as well as intimate presentations.”
Esteemed partners of the art world
H’ART Museum will work hand-in-hand with its international founding partners, drawing on their rich and wide-ranging collections to mount exhibitions in Amsterdam.
Centre Pompidou has one of Europe’s foremost collections of modern and contemporary art. The British Museum is among the oldest museums in the world with a collection spanning continents and oceans. The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), part of the Smithsonian Institution, is the leading museum for American fine and decorative arts and home to one of the most significant and inclusive collections of American art in the world.
H’ART Museum Highlights
The H’ART Museum’s first major show will be the Kandinsky exhibition held in partnership with the Centre Pompidou in mid-2024. In 2026, H’ART welcomes the British Museum’s Feminine power exhibition. The complete program for the next few years will be announced in late 2023.
A work from the collection of one of the founding partners is already on display at the museum from today onwards: Clubbing (2012), a video installation by Martine Gutierrez (b. 1989). The work is from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and is presented in the specially redesigned H’ART Museum space.
Another new piece on show is a work by patricia kaersenhout (b. 1966), from the ABN AMRO Collection, shown in the context of the Dutch Slavery Memorial Year (1 July 2023 – 1 July 2024).
Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary will be celebrated with a big exhibition at H’ART Museum in collaboration with The Leiden Collection in 2025. It is one of the world’s most significant private collections of 17th-century Dutch art and includes a large number of Rembrandts. This is the first time ever that all 17 Rembrandts in this collection will be on show to the public in a single exhibition.
About H’ART Museum
H’ART Museum brings art and narratives from all over the world to Amsterdam, presenting them in new and unexpected ways. We will look beyond borders and open windows to the world. We do this in collaboration with our founding partner museums.
Our museum wil be a dynamic place where we welcome our national and international public with open arms.
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