New Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, new film

This is a list of videos about the Dutch documentary film The New Rijksmuseum, by director Oeke Hoogendijk.

I saw this film on 27 December 2014.

It is about the well-known historical and visual arts museum in Amsterdam. Most of it was closed in 2003 for reconstruction. It was supposed to re-open in 2008. However, re-opening was delayed until 2013.

Here is the English language trailer of the film.

A review of the film is here. Another review is here.

The film records the long, difficult process of demolition of many of the old museum building structures, and of reconstruction, and of bringing back the art objects. Not all artifacts, as the museum’s collection has a million objects and not all of them can be on show.

People made new discoveries in the collection while the museum was closed. They found an antler of a moose (or elk, in British English) which so far had led an inconspicuous life on a museum depot shelf. It turned out to be about a thousand years old. It was from the chapel of Emperor Louis the Pious. Engravers had made it a beautiful visual art object.

Quite some time in the film is about a conflict between the Spanish architects of the museum reconstruction and local Amsterdam cyclists. Ever since the museum’s  original 1885 design, cyclists had been able to pass underneath it. That cycle track was and is public property, not museum property. The architects had difficulty in understanding how important that was for local people. Finally, the cyclists won on this. I think the film tends to be too unsympathetic to the cyclists’ legitimate issue.