Rotterdam Museum to unveil collections thanks to innovative storage facility

Rotterdam - The paintings, sculptures, and other works exhibited in museums and galleries around the world are usually just the tip of a massive iceberg. Many cultural institutions have limited spaces, displaying only a fraction of their collections, and thus the majority of artifacts go unseen by the average person. The Rotterdam museum Boijmans Van Beuningen wants to change that by building a new publicly accessible depot with a mirrored façade, as reported by AP.

"You can manage to install about six percent of the collections, maybe ten, but the remaining 90 percent will still be in storage. What kind of responsibility is that to the public, not displaying that 90 percent?" asks museum director Sjarel Ex. "We know that our collection is very valuable and important. But if you don't have it in sight, there's a danger that you might forget about it," he says.

The new facility will house 151,000 works that visitors will be able to view starting in the fall of 2021. The museum's leadership decided to pursue the project for another reason as well - the old depot located in the basement had become prone to flooding, posing a risk that these invaluable works could be damaged by water. The architect of the depot is Winy Maas, who gained recognition in Rotterdam for the arching structure of the Markthal, which ingeniously connects a market with residential spaces.

The facade of the depot, located in the heart of the so-called museum park, consists of 1,664 mirrored panels that reflect the surrounding greenery and the sky above Rotterdam, nicknamed Manhattan on the Maas due to its port character and skyscrapers. The building, standing over 39 meters high, has a birch grove on its roof. According to the architect, this is meant to compensate for the space the structure takes away from the park.

Inside, the building is divided into five zones with different climates corresponding to the storage requirements of individual works. The central atrium, flanked by elevators, is intersected seemingly chaotically by staircases connecting the various floors. The new depot aims to create a lively and open environment where visitors can see the work of restorers or staff preparing individual artifacts for transfer.