Europe’s Best Contemporary Art Museum?

Here’s a vote for the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands, which just reopened after a renovation that took five years. “Thanks to the efforts of curators who followed the founder’s own predilection for visiting studios and hanging out with some of the best and most radical artists, the museum has one of Europe’s key collections of modern and contemporary art – several thousand works – from 1900 to the present day. It contains many familiar international names, from Joseph Beuys to Donald Judd, Gerhard Richter to Bruce Nauman. And it displays their works in particular contexts: Russian suprematism, Dutch plasticism, and among fellow artists that were collected with the individual sensibilities of a succession of curators. This is not a generic collection. It has character, and it is a museum of surprises.”