Latest news with #VanGogh
The National
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The National
I went to the Tutankhamun exhibition in Glasgow and learned one thing
This all started when I went to the Van Gogh immersive experience, shelling out nearly £20 to see distorted projections of classic artworks alongside specifically appointed selfie areas. This was certainly not how Vincent envisaged his works being received by the public. In fact, for basically the same price you can visit the actual Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and see the art as it was meant to be seen, and actually learn about the artist as you do it, over four impressive floors. It says a lot about the dissipation of attention spans and the dumbing-down of society that event organisers imagine the public need The Starry Night to be dancing around and about 10 times larger than its original size in order for it to be properly enjoyed. So when I heard that Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition was headed to Glasgow, I feared the worst. I really was quite concerned that the Boy King would repeat these same sins. Ancient Egypt is fascinating. Just reading about it is "immersive" enough. The real artefacts, photographs and first-person accounts from those who discovered its hidden wonders should satisfy you, if you can be bothered to engage your imagination. I have to say, though, that Tutankhamun – apparently the largest immersive exhibition currently touring the world, according to the creatives behind it – was somewhat better than I expected. What it involves Based in the SEC, Glasgow, this 90-minute experience actually does feel like an experience. The beginning has plenty of interesting boards to read explaining the history of the famous king and the time he lived in, and areas showing real and imitation artefacts from the time period, complete with genuinely informative descriptions. I particularly enjoyed learning about the history of archaeologist Howard Carter and how he discovered the famous tomb – the best preserved ever found in the Valley of the Kings. These sections, which were text-based and accompanied by key objects linked to Carter (old diary entries, diagrams of the tomb lay-out), were very well curated and a highlight of the experience. The more "immersive" elements of the exhibition were, for me, disappointing. The 30-minute projected film was confusing and lacked context. With a lack of narration it was not clear what we in the audience were actually looking at, and the low-res bugs all over the floor were distracting. Unfortunately it wasn't amazing to look at either. My boyfriend leaned over at one point and simply whispered "PlayStation 2". The bugs and lizards on the floor prompted more questions than answers ... Mainly: Why is this so low-res? (Image: NQ) The next room was the first VR area and sadly this is when I made a very important discovery about myself. It seems that VR actually makes me feel extremely uneasy. I had heard that motion sickness can occur but I'm not even sure if that was the problem. I felt trapped. I did not like being unaware of my actual physical surroundings. The headset showed me stuck in Tutankhamun's tomb before his journey to the afterlife accompanied by Anubis, which should have been cool, but my heart was racing and my anxiety was telling me I'd soon be heading to the afterlife too if I didn't take the goggles off. I composed myself and went to try again but discovered that every time you remove the set it begins the film again. I put it down to bad luck and moved on. I thoroughly enjoyed the hologram view of Tutankhamun's mummification, which isn't too gory but does give plenty of scientific detail to the fascinating process. I was ready to move on to the final experience, the Metaverse walk-around through the Valley of the Kings. One of the best parts of the exhibition is the mummification process (Image: NQ) After waiting in a line for around 15 minutes for a turn in the room, I tried to push my VR fears to one side. When I eventually reached the front of the queue and the very helpful assistant put the wireless headset on, my ambitions waned. Instructed to look to my right to see my boyfriend's avatar in the virtual world, I witnessed a bizarre cartoon version of him. I didn't like it at all. I wimped out and decided to watch him fumble around cluelessly in the room, which was admittedly very entertaining. My verdict There is a concept known as uncanny valley. It's basically when something, maybe a robot or an animation, looks real ... but it isn't quite. In some people it provokes a feeling of queasiness and unease. I fear I can be partial to this effect. Thinking back on my life I remember being freaked out by claymation figures that are a little too human looking, video-game characters that blur the line between real and fake, and even animatronic people in theme parks. If this is something you experience, I would suggest the Tutankhamun exhibit is not for you. However if you are good with VR, it could be a good time. It has a decent blend of entertainment and informative exhibition space, but more history wouldn't go amiss. I heard other attendees saying they were going to Google lots about Ancient Egypt after leaving. A good exhibition should answer all your questions there and then. It is probably not a bad shout for a summer holiday activity with the kids. Adult tickets cost £28 while kids prices are £20.45, so it's not cheap, but it's also not significantly more expensive than other summer break treats like going to the zoo. With the amount packed into the exhibition, it feels like decent value for money. For those of us who can't take the uncanny, we can stick to the straight-forward, classic museum spaces with no virtual spinning around or cartoon versions of our loved ones. Let's make sure to support our amazing traditional museums here in Scotland, and support their work, so they can continue to put on incredible, educational exhibitions for years to come.
Daily Mirror
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
'My little trick makes your living room look 10x more expensive - and it's free'
All you need is a smart TV and access to YouTube - it works best for flat screen TVs hung on a wall For anyone who enjoys decorating their home to give it a relaxing feel and entertaining guests, this hack could become your new favourite thing to do. I discovered it myself last night and have been trying it ever since. All it involves is a flat-screen smart TV and access to YouTube, which most smart TV s have. It instantly makes your room look ten times more expensive, creating the illusion of a large piece of artwork in your living room. Given how costly artwork is, especially if you buy a large canvas, this trick helps enhance your room to give it that 'luxury' feel for free. It works best if you have a TV hanging on your wall, but I still think it looks great if you have a TV on top of a stand or cabinet. All you need to do is use YouTube's wide variety of arty 'screen savers'. By putting one on your TV, you can turn the screen into an expensive-looking piece of art. There are so many to pick from - from famous paintings by Van Gogh and Monet, to colourful landscapes and close-up flowers. The "YouTube wall art TV hack" is a technique for turning an ordinary smart TV into a display that looks like framed artwork, typically by using certain YouTube channels and videos. This method replicates the "Art Mode" feature available on certain Samsung Frame TVs, but it doesn't require you to buy that particular model. Although I've only just discovered the trick, it has been around for a while, and several people have already posted about it across social media. One TikTok user, LaraJoannaJarvis, took to the video-sharing platform to give homeowners a glimpse of what the hack looks like when used in her living room. She said, "I saw this hack online, and I want to see if it works and if you can use it, too. If you want one of these really aesthetic-looking TVs but you don't have one, this is a free trick to get it on your television. We're going to search here for framed Christmas TV art." Putting one example up on her screen, she added, "How freaking cute is that?" She continued her demonstration, saying, "Let's choose another one—isn't that just so cute? I love that you can choose loads of different frames and lots of different pictures within the frames as well. I really hope that was helpful. Let me know if you guys try it and maybe share this with someone who might like it, too." In the comment section, one viewer replied: "THAT'S SO CUTEEE." Lara wrote back: "Thank you! It looks so sweet, doesn't it?" Another said: "Clever! Those ambient jazz YouTube videos with beautiful scenery are my daily go-to. I love the decorative picture, soft music, raindrops, or fire crackle, as I can't have a fireplace myself." How does the YouTube wall art hack work? First, you have to search for the art you want on YouTube using keywords like "framed art," "TV art slideshow," or "TV artwork." There are several channels to explore that specialise in providing free digital art for TVs, including those offering rotating art pieces or specific themes like vintage art or landscapes. Some also play music at the same time, which is great for creating a relaxing ambience. If your smart TV doesn't have YouTube, you can download it from the TV's app store. If you have the YouTube app on your phone, you could always cast it. Alternatively, you can use a streaming device (like a Fire TV Stick). If you really want to achieve that 'luxury' look, you could even attach a wooden frame around the edge of your TV. This can be done using Velcro, elastic straps, or other methods that allow for easy removal. To enhance the picture, consider art mode settings. If your TV has an Art Mode feature, explore its options for adjusting display settings, such as brightness, contrast, and sleep settings. Some TVs allow you to display photos or artwork from your own collection via apps like Google Photos. This "hack" allows you to enjoy a visually appealing art display on your TV without the need for a specialised "Frame TV".
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Humble peasants … or an odyssey of sex and death? The Millet masterpiece that electrified modern art
It was Salvador Dalí who turned a small, intense rural scene called The Angelus, painted by Jean-François Millet in 1857-59 and hugely popular in its day, into a totem of modern art. In the original, a pious peasant couple have heard the Angelus bell from a distant church, the Catholic call to prayer, and paused their work digging potatoes to lower their heads and pray. But from Dalí's writings, we know he saw far more in the painting, from obscene sex to family tragedy. In one of his many versions of it, Atavism at Twilight, the couple sprout agricultural implements from their bodies. In his surreal drawings these good country people become mouldering, mummified husks, or are transformed into fossils by time and sadness. Now that the original painting is being lent by the Musée d'Orsay to the National Gallery as the star of its forthcoming show Millet: Life on the Land, we will all get a chance to obsess over this innocent-seeming artwork. The Angelus was an instant hit in the 1800s, widely reproduced, while the original passed through a string of private collections for record prices until the Louvre, which first tried to buy it for France in 1889, acquired it in 1910. In 1932 it received perhaps the ultimate fan homage: it was attacked – slashed several times with a penknife. After being repaired, it remained in the Louvre until the Orsay opened in 1986. Decades ahead of Dalí, Van Gogh also copied it in a fervent 1880 drawing that was one of his first artistic efforts – its untrained clumsiness makes the emotion even more touching. He revered The Angelus as his ideal model of all that art should be and do. In their fascination with Millet's masterpiece, both these modernist giants show how a work of art can turn into something else in the beholder's mind. Dalí deliberately induced a state akin to illness in his mind in order to hallucinate upon The Angelus. 'The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad,' he said. Van Gogh was of course less able to switch it on and off. Van Gogh was in London, working at the Covent Garden branch of the art dealer Goupil et Fils, when he wrote about its power in one of his earliest letters. 'That painting by Millet, L'angelus du soir,' he told his brother Theo in 1874, 'that's it, indeed – that's magnificent, that's poetry.' At the age of just 21, five years before he decided to become a painter, the Dutch pastor's son saw something uniquely poetic in The Angelus. Its creator, Jean-François Millet, was then near the end of his life. Like Bruegel centuries before him, Millet painted rural life so authentically that people thought he was a peasant sharing his world. This was not entirely groundless: he was born into a farming family from Grouchy, near the Channel coast in Normandy. Millet said The Angelus depicted a memory of this childhood: 'The idea came to me because I remembered that my grandmother, hearing the church bell ringing while we were working in the fields, always made us stop work to say the Angelus prayer for the poor departed.' Millet was not a naive artist. He trained in Paris with the history painter Paul Delaroche, famed for The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833). But things didn't go well and he retreated to Cherbourg. He seemed stuck in a career as a local portrait painter. Then, suddenly, he found himself. Millet started painting the hard life of the peasantry. It was a political decision. He had his first hit with The Winnower, a painting of a man shaking a basket of grain, throwing golden specks high in the air so when they fall the wheat will be separated from the chaff. Does that sound allegorical? It surely is, for Millet unveiled this image of a peasant weeding out corrupt bad seeds at the Paris Salon in 1848, the year revolutions convulsed Europe. The paintings that followed are monuments to backbreaking rural work: The Sower; The Gleaners. Millet doesn't paint the landscape as an idyll but a place where the poor are worked to death. Van Gogh saw Millet's compassion through a religious lens. Soon after that early letter to Theo he was sacked and, after a spell teaching, tried to become a preacher and missionary to the poor. His family thought he had a religious mania. His fervour included worshipping Millet. When he saw an exhibition of Millet's drawings, he raved, 'I felt like telling myself, take off your shoes, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.' Van Gogh's debt to Millet is obvious in his early work. In his 1885 drawing Peasant Woman Digging, he gives the digger massive, earthy presence – like Millet's folk. But his most blatant reference to The Angelus is The Potato Eaters. In Millet's Angelus, the peasants have taken a break from their arduous toil digging potatoes from the hard earth: we see spuds in their basket and in a bulging sack in their wheelbarrow. Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters feels like the next chapter. The peasants have gone home to share a humble meal with their family. Van Gogh stakes his claim here to succeed Millet as a peasant painter. But did Van Gogh respond so intensely to The Angelus for reasons that were harder to name than politics or religion? A surrealist would say yes. Dalí would see unnameable insinuations in The Angelus – and being Dalí, name them. For him, this painting was 'the most troubling, the most enigmatic, the densest, the richest in unconscious thoughts that has ever been.' Seen through his eyes, The Angelus is less a slice of rustic life, more a kitsch surrealist dreamwork. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion Take a look at Millet's scene. The brown lumps of potatoes in the basket look turd-like while the shapeless sack might contain part of a body. The three prongs of the huge fork have been driven into the ground with unwonted violence. If that doesn't seem phallic enough, the two thick hafts of the wheelbarrow poke from the woman's skirts. Do these Freudian intimations point to something unspeakable in the figures' relationship? In Dalí's Atavism at Twilight, the fork is stuck in the woman's back: the man dreams of sodomising her. She's his mum, according to Dalí. Alternatively, he suggested, they are the parents of a dead child. Dalí believed that Millet had originally painted a grave in the foreground. You can sort of see it. He persuaded the Louvre to X-ray it and claimed the results confirmed his theory. It haunts his eerie 1965 painting The Perpignan Station, in which the grave becomes a railway track dividing the Angelus couple. Perpignan, the first station in France coming from Spain, and where papers were checked, becomes here a liminal place between life and death. Dalí had enough ideas about The Angelus to fill a book, and they did. He penned The Tragic Myth of Millet's Angelus in the 1930s, and published it three decades later. It has been hailed as the most ambitious theorisation of what he called his 'paranoiac-critical method' in which you hallucinate layers and metamorphoses of an object or image. Did he mean a word of it? Was he really obsessed with The Angelus or did he just enjoy the idea that he was? One piece of evidence his delirium was authentic is the 1929 film he created with Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou, in which a couple stand like the peasants in The Angelus (but with male and female positions reversed) until their love petrifies and they are buried in sand. This film, Dalí's most spontaneous work of dream art, was made before he went public with his Millet obsession. So The Angelus really was lodged in his psyche. He soon repainted it in his 1933 work Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus, in which the couple become colossal, slowly eroding monuments towering over a desert. Dalí's lifelong attempts to understand why The Angelus hooked him became a surreal odyssey of sex and death that is a good guide to enjoying a work of art. We should all be a bit paranoiac-critical when we visit an art gallery and let a work of art suggest as many things as come into our minds. I can relate to it because I'm strangely thrilled that Millet's painting of two French peasants in a flat, bleak landscape with a church spire on the gold and bronze skyline is coming to the National Gallery. The first time I saw it was nowhere near a museum but in a hypermarket in rural France on a camping trip when I was a teenager. There it was, as a cheap print on canvas, this glowing, frozen scene. I had to buy it. Why does art capture us? Sometimes a particular painting just seems to say more than you can express, and stays inside you. This is the mystery of art, and the mystery of The Angelus. I'm not saying what I see in it – I am not sure I want to know, let alone confess it. But it calls me like a bell at twilight. Millet: Life on the Land is at the National Gallery, London, from 7 August to 19 October
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Humble peasants … or an odyssey of sex and death? The Millet masterpiece that electrified modern art
It was Salvador Dalí who turned a small, intense rural scene called The Angelus, painted by Jean-François Millet in 1857-59 and hugely popular in its day, into a totem of modern art. In the original, a pious peasant couple have heard the Angelus bell from a distant church, the Catholic call to prayer, and paused their work digging potatoes to lower their heads and pray. But from Dalí's writings, we know he saw far more in the painting, from obscene sex to family tragedy. In one of his many versions of it, Atavism at Twilight, the couple sprout agricultural implements from their bodies. In his surreal drawings these good country people become mouldering, mummified husks, or are transformed into fossils by time and sadness. Now that the original painting is being lent by the Musée d'Orsay to the National Gallery as the star of its forthcoming show Millet: Life on the Land, we will all get a chance to obsess over this innocent-seeming artwork. The Angelus was an instant hit in the 1800s, widely reproduced, while the original passed through a string of private collections for record prices until the Louvre, which first tried to buy it for France in 1889, acquired it in 1910. In 1932 it received perhaps the ultimate fan homage: it was attacked – slashed several times with a penknife. After being repaired, it remained in the Louvre until the Orsay opened in 1986. Decades ahead of Dalí, Van Gogh also copied it in a fervent 1880 drawing that was one of his first artistic efforts – its untrained clumsiness makes the emotion even more touching. He revered The Angelus as his ideal model of all that art should be and do. In their fascination with Millet's masterpiece, both these modernist giants show how a work of art can turn into something else in the beholder's mind. Dalí deliberately induced a state akin to illness in his mind in order to hallucinate upon The Angelus. 'The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad,' he said. Van Gogh was of course less able to switch it on and off. Van Gogh was in London, working at the Covent Garden branch of the art dealer Goupil et Fils, when he wrote about its power in one of his earliest letters. 'That painting by Millet, L'angelus du soir,' he told his brother Theo in 1874, 'that's it, indeed – that's magnificent, that's poetry.' At the age of just 21, five years before he decided to become a painter, the Dutch pastor's son saw something uniquely poetic in The Angelus. Its creator, Jean-François Millet, was then near the end of his life. Like Bruegel centuries before him, Millet painted rural life so authentically that people thought he was a peasant sharing his world. This was not entirely groundless: he was born into a farming family from Grouchy, near the Channel coast in Normandy. Millet said The Angelus depicted a memory of this childhood: 'The idea came to me because I remembered that my grandmother, hearing the church bell ringing while we were working in the fields, always made us stop work to say the Angelus prayer for the poor departed.' Millet was not a naive artist. He trained in Paris with the history painter Paul Delaroche, famed for The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833). But things didn't go well and he retreated to Cherbourg. He seemed stuck in a career as a local portrait painter. Then, suddenly, he found himself. Millet started painting the hard life of the peasantry. It was a political decision. He had his first hit with The Winnower, a painting of a man shaking a basket of grain, throwing golden specks high in the air so when they fall the wheat will be separated from the chaff. Does that sound allegorical? It surely is, for Millet unveiled this image of a peasant weeding out corrupt bad seeds at the Paris Salon in 1848, the year revolutions convulsed Europe. The paintings that followed are monuments to backbreaking rural work: The Sower; The Gleaners. Millet doesn't paint the landscape as an idyll but a place where the poor are worked to death. Van Gogh saw Millet's compassion through a religious lens. Soon after that early letter to Theo he was sacked and, after a spell teaching, tried to become a preacher and missionary to the poor. His family thought he had a religious mania. His fervour included worshipping Millet. When he saw an exhibition of Millet's drawings, he raved, 'I felt like telling myself, take off your shoes, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.' Van Gogh's debt to Millet is obvious in his early work. In his 1885 drawing Peasant Woman Digging, he gives the digger massive, earthy presence – like Millet's folk. But his most blatant reference to The Angelus is The Potato Eaters. In Millet's Angelus, the peasants have taken a break from their arduous toil digging potatoes from the hard earth: we see spuds in their basket and in a bulging sack in their wheelbarrow. Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters feels like the next chapter. The peasants have gone home to share a humble meal with their family. Van Gogh stakes his claim here to succeed Millet as a peasant painter. But did Van Gogh respond so intensely to The Angelus for reasons that were harder to name than politics or religion? A surrealist would say yes. Dalí would see unnameable insinuations in The Angelus – and being Dalí, name them. For him, this painting was 'the most troubling, the most enigmatic, the densest, the richest in unconscious thoughts that has ever been.' Seen through his eyes, The Angelus is less a slice of rustic life, more a kitsch surrealist dreamwork. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion Take a look at Millet's scene. The brown lumps of potatoes in the basket look turd-like while the shapeless sack might contain part of a body. The three prongs of the huge fork have been driven into the ground with unwonted violence. If that doesn't seem phallic enough, the two thick hafts of the wheelbarrow poke from the woman's skirts. Do these Freudian intimations point to something unspeakable in the figures' relationship? In Dalí's Atavism at Twilight, the fork is stuck in the woman's back: the man dreams of sodomising her. She's his mum, according to Dalí. Alternatively, he suggested, they are the parents of a dead child. Dalí believed that Millet had originally painted a grave in the foreground. You can sort of see it. He persuaded the Louvre to X-ray it and claimed the results confirmed his theory. It haunts his eerie 1965 painting The Perpignan Station, in which the grave becomes a railway track dividing the Angelus couple. Perpignan, the first station in France coming from Spain, and where papers were checked, becomes here a liminal place between life and death. Dalí had enough ideas about The Angelus to fill a book, and they did. He penned The Tragic Myth of Millet's Angelus in the 1930s, and published it three decades later. It has been hailed as the most ambitious theorisation of what he called his 'paranoiac-critical method' in which you hallucinate layers and metamorphoses of an object or image. Did he mean a word of it? Was he really obsessed with The Angelus or did he just enjoy the idea that he was? One piece of evidence his delirium was authentic is the 1929 film he created with Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou, in which a couple stand like the peasants in The Angelus (but with male and female positions reversed) until their love petrifies and they are buried in sand. This film, Dalí's most spontaneous work of dream art, was made before he went public with his Millet obsession. So The Angelus really was lodged in his psyche. He soon repainted it in his 1933 work Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus, in which the couple become colossal, slowly eroding monuments towering over a desert. Dalí's lifelong attempts to understand why The Angelus hooked him became a surreal odyssey of sex and death that is a good guide to enjoying a work of art. We should all be a bit paranoiac-critical when we visit an art gallery and let a work of art suggest as many things as come into our minds. I can relate to it because I'm strangely thrilled that Millet's painting of two French peasants in a flat, bleak landscape with a church spire on the gold and bronze skyline is coming to the National Gallery. The first time I saw it was nowhere near a museum but in a hypermarket in rural France on a camping trip when I was a teenager. There it was, as a cheap print on canvas, this glowing, frozen scene. I had to buy it. Why does art capture us? Sometimes a particular painting just seems to say more than you can express, and stays inside you. This is the mystery of art, and the mystery of The Angelus. I'm not saying what I see in it – I am not sure I want to know, let alone confess it. But it calls me like a bell at twilight. Millet: Life on the Land is at the National Gallery, London, from 7 August to 19 October
Telegraph
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The 10 best museums in Amsterdam
For a small country, the Netherlands has made a huge impact on world art, both back in the 17th century, then again with straight lines and bold primary colours in the 20th – with Van Gogh slipped in along the way. So, the Big Three museums – Old Masters, Van Gogh and modern art respectively – lead the way. But Amsterdam is a treasure box of other attractions, too, from a quirky collection of mechanical pianos, through canal-side mansions dripping with chandeliers and shining with silver, to boundary-bursting photography, and an urban explosion of street art and graffiti. All our museum recommendations below have been hand selected and tested by our resident destination expert. Find out more below or for further inspiration, see our guides to the city's best hotels, restaurants, shopping, bars & cafés, attractions and free things to do. Find a museum by type: Art History Culture Art Rijksmuseum One of the world's great art museums adds glittering gold and silver, centuries-old costumes, furniture fit for royalty, and precious dolls' houses to a parade of Old Masters that includes Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Steen and Frans Hals. Insider tip: First check out the exceptional centuries-old treasures in the Asian Pavilion downstairs, and save the Old Masters till after 3.30pm, when the halls are less busy. Neighbourhood: Museum Quarter Metro: Trams 2, 3, 5, 12; Vijzelstraat metro Website: Van Gogh Museum More of Van Gogh's canvases hang here than anywhere else in the world, including Sunflowers and Wheatfield with Crows, alongside sketches, letters and much else, in an imaginative display that brings you up close to the man himself. Insider tip: Pre-book as far in advance as you can, and aim for early in the week, after 3.30pm to avoid the really busy periods. Neighbourhood: Museum Quarter Metro: Trams 2, 3, 5, 12; Vijzelstraat metro Website: Stedelijk Museum This museum is home to all that has rocked modern and contemporary art, both Dutch (De Stijl, CoBra, Mondrian) and international (Picasso, Malevich, Warhol), from the 20th century till now. And there's a fine collection of design, too. Insider tip: It's hidden at the back of the museum downstairs, but don't miss the Appelbar, the Stedelijk's original refreshment kiosk with bright murals by CoBrA artist Karel Appel. FOAM Blockbuster shows and retrospectives of big-name photographers (such as Richard Avedon and Cartier-Bresson) share space with radical new talent, and forays into the furthest limits of where photography can take us. Solo shows, themed exhibitions and plenty of discussion forums join the mix. Insider tip: Buy a 'FOAM Edition' – an original photo by a past exhibitor, in the FOAM Gallery shop at the top of the building. Return to index History Verzetsmuseum (Museum of the Resistance) A riveting insight into life in the Netherlands under the Nazi occupation, and of the Dutch resistance movement. Interactive displays, along with the personal stories of heroes, Nazi collaborators and ordinary people trapped in between put you right in the moment. Insider tip: Press a doorbell to hear the various excuses neighbours offered for not taking on an onderduiker (secret lodger, hiding from the Nazis). It makes it all seem very real. Neighbourhood: Amsterdam East / former Jewish Quarter Metro: Tram 14; Waterlooplein metro Website: Joods Cultureel Kwartier (Jewish Cultural Quarter) Amsterdam's former Jewish quarter is home to monuments and museums that explore a community that made an essential contribution to the city: a culturally rich Jewish Historical Museum, the magnificent 17th-century Portuguese Synagogue and a sobering National Holocaust Museum. Insider tip: A combined ticket valid for the historical museum, the holocaust museum and the Portuguese Synagogue is valid for a week and good value. Return to index Culture Museum Van Loon Of all the canal houses open to the public, this 17th-century mansion is the one that most has the atmosphere of an (admittedly very grand) family home. Among the portraits and tinkling crystal you are back in another age – but it feels as if the owners might be back any minute and catch you there. Insider tip: Don't miss the elegant formal garden, hidden from the street view behind the house. Neighbourhood: Canal Belt Metro: Tram 2, 4, 12, 17. Vijzelgracht metro Website: Huis Marseille Grand canal house meets fascinating photography, Huis Marseille stages engaging and challenging contemporary photo and video exhibitions, often hung in ways that respond to its historic architecture, drawing on outside artists as well as its strong in-house collection of mainly Dutch, South African and Japanese work. Insider tip: Look up! The ceiling in the Garden Room is by Jacob de Wit, the leading 18th-century Dutch interiors painter. Neighbourhood: Canal Belt Metro: Tram 2, 12, 17; Rokin metro Website: STЯAAT: Street Art Museum Amsterdam A wharf-side warehouse in former docklands offers the wall space necessary for gigantic displays of street art and graffiti. Abstract or graphic, startling or soothing, there's work by both local and international artists, and even workshops if you want a go yourself. Insider tip: A Museum Card is not valid for this museum, but there's plenty of street art outside as the area is a hotspot for local graffiti artists. Geelvinck Pianola Museum Discover a fascinating collection of self-playing pianos, from the Charlie Chaplin honky-tonk variety to sophisticated instruments whose scrolls reproduce every nuance of the original pianist's playing – with a collection of original scrolls created by the likes of Prokofiev and Debussy. Insider tip: See and hear the machines put through their paces, sometimes in combo with live musicians at one of the regular 'recitals'. Return to index How we choose Every attraction and activity in this curated list has been tried and tested by our destination expert, to provide you with their insider perspective. We cover a range of budgets and styles, from world-class museums to family-friendly theme parks – to best suit every type of traveller. We update this list regularly to keep up with the latest openings and provide up to date recommendations. About our expert Rodney Bolt lighted upon Amsterdam nearly 30 years ago after flitting through Greece, Germany, and the UK, and nothing could persuade him to leave. He has written on everything he loves about the city for publications worldwide, and co-authors the Peter Posthumus mysteries, all set in Amsterdam. Strolling along the canals still tops his list of life's pleasures.
