and 1950s the museum acquired parts of the collec-
tion of paint manufacturer Pierre Alexander Reg-
nault. With works by, amongst others, Kandinsky,
Picasso, and Ensor, the Regnault acquisitions still
form the centre of gravity of the museum’s collection
of paintings.
In 1945, Willem Sandberg became the museum’s
fourth director. Under his leadership, the Stedelijk
was not only able to secure some top quality works
from the German expressionist, cubist, and the Stijl
movements, the museum also saw the structured
entrance of photography in its collection. Sandberg’s
passion for photography went back to the pre-war
era. At that time he was a member of the Association
for Crafts and Applied Arts, VANK. The VANK
organized the groundbreakingFoto 37exhibition at
the Stedelijk in 1937.Foto 37made The Netherlands
familiar with different forms and applications of
photography. Eleven years later, while Sandberg
was already in charge, another noteworthy pho-
tography exhibition was hosted by the museum;
Foto 48. Again an association of artists, this time
the GFk, the Association of Practitioners of the
Applied Arts, was responsible for the exhibition
that put the emphasis on photojournalism. The
museum only played a facilitating role.
The earliest passage of photography through the
museum took place in August 1908 with theInter-
national Exhibition of Photographic Art. That exhi-
bition was set up in the tradition of the salons for
painting, which were very popular. The exhibition,
directly and indirectly, had influence on photogra-
phy and the collecting of the medium. Yet the
Stedelijk did not seem quite ready to explore
those paths itself. Also important to mention in
this context are the national exhibitions of photo-
graphic works the Stedelijk annually hosted in the
1920s. But as the 1937 and 1948 efforts, those
exhibitions were not part of the museum’s policy.
Only in January 1958, just under 50 years after the
museum’s first association with the medium, a
strategy for collecting and conserving photography
was set up.
Director Sandberg, the head of the museum’s
library, Kloet, and an advisory committee of GFk
photographers outlined the program. The photo-
graphic archive would be placed under the aegis of
the museum’s library and led by Kloet, himself an
enthusiastic amateur photographer. The mission
was to collect primarily Dutch photography after- Photographers were asked to send work of
predefined measurements to the museum for
approval. Upon acceptance the pictures were
mounted in aluminum frames. Later, when the
value of the vintage prints became obvious, the
original prints were again lifted. Soon the museum
possessed a significant collection.
The photography collection was frequently pre-
sented at the Stedelijk, and until the end of the
1960s, up to three exhibitions a year were mounted.
In 1961, at theDag Amsterdam(Hello Amsterdam)
exhibition 59 photographers were featured with the
pictures they all took on the same day in Amster-
dam. But at the end of the decade the museum’s
attention to the medium faded. Only after lobbying
by the GFk was the photography program revital-
ized in the mid-1970s. Then-Director Edy de Wilde
decided the collection would be a part of the Applied
Arts Department and led by Freerk Sleeboom. Slee-
boom left after nearly two years but in that time
made the first move towards the collection’s inter-
nationalization. His successor, Els Barents, pro-
ceeded with that effort, although developments in
Dutch photography were not neglected. During the
14 years Barents was in charge, the collection took
its definitive shape developing around several the-
matic clusters. Gifts and acquisitions played an
important part in that process. Notable acquisitions
include a collection of Bauhaus photographs in
1983, reinforcing the avant-garde cluster of the col-
lection, and that of the Diepraam collection of over
1,000 photographs with the accent on Pictorialism
and photojournalism, in 1987. Other important hubs
are modernism, documentary photography, and
artists’ portraits. In 1994, the photography collec-
tion doubled with the permanent loan of the
National Fine Arts Service collection of twentieth-
century Dutch photography. The loan, giving the
museum a collection of over 8,000 photographs,
was the last significant acquisition of the century.
Since the 1980s, the museum’s attention shifted
toward artists for whom photography was just one
possible medium, allowing the photography collec-
tion to tie in more closely with its painting collec-
tion as well as be more in line with developments in
contemporary art in the decades that followed.
However, due to the impressive archive founded
by Sandberg and Kloet and to the shift in attention
of the 1980s, the photography collection offers the
museum the unique possibility to not only be able
to show recent developments, but also unveil the
foundations of those developments. The 1996 exhi-
bition100 X Photodid just that, emphasizing the
unparalleled position the Stedelijk has in the Eu-
ropean museum and photography landscape.
StijnVanDeVyverSeealso: Museums: Europe; Photography in The
NetherlandsSTEDELIJK MUSEUM