An Artsy Day

On Tuesday we took three busses through the countryside to make our way to a museum tucked inside the National Park.  It's in the part of Holland known as the Veluwe--a lovely forested area.  The bus dropped us at the entrance to the park and we picked up three of the white bikes-to-borrow that are available at various stations.

We rode the bikes into the park to the Kroller-Muller museum.

The paintings in this museum were owned by Helene Kroller-Muller (1869-1939) until economic difficulties in the 1930s.  Rather than selling off the art, Helene donated it to the Dutch State with the condition that the pieces be kept together and that a museum be built for public viewing.

Helene's favorite painter was Vincent Van Gogh and the museum has the largest collection of his works with the exception of the Van Gogh family collection.

Van Gogh: Women Digging Up Potatoes

Van Gogh: Bridge at Arles

Most of the other paintings are modern including several Picassos. 

The girls enjoyed seeing the different styles of art--they were even surprised that some of the modern paintings were famous art work--"They look like scribbles--I think I can paint that!"

Ana did like this one:

There are a variety of sculptures on the lawn of the museum.  Some of them were really modern and made us wonder who left the construction tools out on the lawn.

Our favorite was the floating duck.

It was a good field trip to see some really famous art work.
And some of the art work was huggable.

We took the bikes back out of the park and found our way back to Nijkerk by bus.