The Return of the Musical Instrument Collection to Amsterdam

In addition to its renowned paintings by Dutch masters, the Rijksmuseum boasts over one million objects, including a major collection of early musical instruments. The latter was mostly assembled in the last decades of the nineteenth century through the acquisition of private collections and a number of permanent loans by Dutch institutions, such as the Municipality of Amsterdam, the Dutch Royal Antiquarian Society, and others. Included among the collections of decorative arts and history, the musical instruments were displayed in the museum galleries up to World War II. In 1952, the Rijksmuseum’s musical instruments were given on long term loan to the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, which had already acquired the vast musical collection of the local banker Daniel François Scheurleer in 1933. De facto, from 1952 to 2012, the Gemeentemuseum’s collection became the only public collection of musical instruments in the Netherlands . Then in 2012, after 60 years, the Rijksmuseum instruments were returned to Amsterdam, and partly displayed in the museum’s refurbished galleries. Over 3,000 musical instruments belonging to the Gemeentemuseum (recently renamed the Kunstmuseum Den Haag) remained in The Hague.

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