The Municipal Museum is an art museum, located in The Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

, 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...

.

The museum was built by the Dutch architect H.P. Berlage

Hendrik Petrus Berlage

thumb|120px|left|BerlageHendrik Petrus Berlage, Amsterdam, 21 February 1856 — The Hague 12 August 1934, was a prominent Dutch architect.-Overview:...

. It is renowned for its large Mondrian

Piet Mondrian

Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...

 collection, the largest in the world. His last work, Victory Boogie-Woogie

Victory Boogie-Woogie

Victory Boogie-Woogie is the last, unfinished, work by the Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondriaan. Left incomplete in 1944, since 1998 it has been in the collection of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. It was purchased at a cost of 80 million guilders from the American collector Samuel Irving Newhouse...

, is on display here.

Modern art

The modern art collection provides a varied overview of developments in the fine arts since the early 19th century. Charley Toorop's piercing eyes and Floris Verster's bowl of eggs are flanked by works by leading foreign artists, including Picasso and Monet, plus an extensive collection of German Expressionist pieces. This helps to place Dutch examples of the Realist and Symbolist schools and the De Stijl

De Stijl

De Stijl , propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian , Vilmos Huszár , and Bart van der Leck , and the architects Gerrit Rietveld , Robert van 't Hoff , and J.J.P. Oud...

 movement in an international context. Outstanding features in the collection are the Hague School paintings and a marvellous series of works by Mondrian

Piet Mondrian

Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...

, ranging from moody Dutch landscapes to the sparkling Victory Boogie Woogie. As a whole, the collection traces the thrilling story of modern art - right through to today.

Print Room

The Modern Art Department’s print room has a large collection of drawings, prints and posters dating from the 19th and 20th century. Most are by Dutch artists, but there are also major groups of foreign works. These include a fine collection of 19th-century French works on paper with an emphasis on work by Bresdin, Redon and Lautrec. German Expressionism is also well represented. The entire collection numbers around 50,000 objects. Parts of the collection are regularly exhibited in the print room.

Fashion

The Gemeentemuseum possesses one of the world's leading collections of fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

 items. It includes both historical costumes and contemporary designs. Exhibitions focus not just on changing fashions in the Netherlands, but also on landmark designs from abroad. Accessories, jewellery

Jewellery

Jewellery or jewelry is a form of personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.With some exceptions, such as medical alert bracelets or military dog tags, jewellery normally differs from other items of personal adornment in that it has no other purpose than to...

, fashion drawings and prints all help to place the garments in a broader perspective.

Music

The present-day music collection includes an extensive collection of instruments

Musical instrument

A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

, illustrative visual materials and a splendid music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

library, which together document the history of (mainly European) music.

External links

• Official Gemeentemuseum Den Haag website