This weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting Amsterdam. I found this beautiful city to be so unique and for a such a small city, it felt as if every inch was packed with different things to look at. Street art, I found, was not the most prevalent of things I saw. With such a crowded city, buildings, shops, houses, canals, bridges, took up most of the space with few blank spaces from street artists aside from sporadic graffiti tags and a few stickers. But, luckily I’d done my research before visiting this wonderful place and was proved wrong in my assumed absence of street art. In fact, there is an entire museum devoted to it.
Street Art Museum Amsterdam was founded by Anna Stolyarova, originally from Ukraine and now lives in Amsterdam Nieuw-West. The museum that spans a couple miles, holds more than thirty murals for visitors to see. The murals are dispersed and hidden within the walls of Geuzenveld-Slotermeer, and were specifically commissioned for the area to “enhance the bond between the residents, art in public space and the neighborhood”, according to Stolyarova.
The museum focuses on the connection between the new production techniques of the contemporary art movement of graffiti/street-art to its more historic origins. Moreover, through the true stories of these murals, visitors get a picture of the local residents of Amsterdam as well as the history of the district, its ups and downs, and special characteristics.
One can visit all of the pieces within three hours for a very low price. The museum’s curators carefully select the artists and give them full freedom of artistic expression. The museum provides the artists with the residence opportunity in what is known as Nieuw-West. Today, Street Art Museum Amsterdam is a project run by the non-profit foundation Glamorous Outcasts and is one of the newer, most successful museums in all of Amsterdam.
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