Hermitage Amsterdam
‘De schatkamer! Meesterwerken uit de Hermitage’ /
‘Treasury! Masterpieces from the Hermitage’

2019
Exhibition architecture

Hermitage Amsterdam – a branch of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg – celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2019. For that occasion, the Amsterdam branch gained access to the entire collection of the Russian museum, bringing together quite a number of extraordinary museum treasures ranging from a fascinating Venus statuette from 23,000 BC to a devilish swan created by Belgian artist Jan Fabre in 2016. With over two hundred items – including works by Da Vinci, Dürer, Van Dyck, Matisse, Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Velázquez and Van der Weyden – the ‘Treasury’ exhibit offered visitors a grand tour through the entire history of art.

For this unique event, Hermitage Amsterdam commissioned us to design the exhibition architecture. To best showcase the marvellous artworks from St. Petersburg in the 3000-square-metre space of Hermitage Amsterdam, we created a golden floor and restrained and clean-lined architecture including a circle of satellite spaces around a central hall.

Perhaps our greatest challenge was to find the right material for the golden floor. Our research led us to combine two foils: a shiny gold one and a durable, highly resistant one. This floor reflected everything around, changing for the visitors as they moved around on it. The special surroundings helped bring to the fore the extraordinary beauty of the precious works of art from across many millennia.

Head of exhibition: Marlies Kleiterp
Concept writers: Irina Bagdasarova, Vincent Boele

see also: 
Hermitage Amsterdam: ‘De schatkamer! Meesterwerken uit de Hermitage’ /
‘Treasury! Masterpieces from the Hermitage’ – Exhibition catalogue