In the past, and that was only three and a half years ago, some residents of Nijmegen complained that the museum looked like a large, closed box. “It looks like a swimming pool,” they would say. This has changed in the renovated Valkhof Museum, which reopens on June 6. The museum shop and catering facilities, previously located at the rear, are now located at the front of the museum, behind a large glass facade. Director Hedwig Saam: “You can now see much better from the outside that something is happening here.”
Compared to 1999, when this museum was completed, different things are now expected of a museum, says Saam. “A pleasant café with a terrace, a nice museum shop – that is much more important than then.”
The museum also changed inside. In the opening hall, a fresh color palette by Arnhem designer Ineke Hans predominates; a new counter in pink ‘bathroom tiles’, orange-pink lockers, and pink-red sofas by furniture designer Kho Liang le. “Fifty shades of pink,” Saam laughs. Thanks to an ingenious round void, more daylight now enters the basement. The museum opens with three exhibitions: Man on the border, From Within and Power of the people.
Orange-red lockers in Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen. In the renovated museum, a fresh color palette by Arnhem designer Ineke Hans predominates.
Photo Ivar Pel
The pink-red stairs in the entrance.
Photo Flip Franssen / Het Valkhof
Rescue plan
Almost ten years ago, the Valkhof Museum was in danger of going under. Years of shaky policy and a lack of vision had led to the museum struggling with mounting losses, an unclear profile and declining visitor numbers – in the years before corona these ranged from approximately 70,000 to 107,000 visitors per year.
When Hedwig Saam took over as new director in 2018 – the fourth in four years – she found, NRC noted at the time, “a building in disrepair”. Together with the municipality, Saam and her team worked on a plan to get the museum back on track. At the beginning of 2021, the Nijmegen city council decided on a renovation costing 11 million euros at the expense of the municipality of Nijmegen, with the condition that the municipality becomes the owner of another 5 million euros.
The museum must repay that amount through the rent, and the target of 125,000 visitors per year plays an important role in this. That should be possible, Saam believes. In the 1910s the museum regularly attracted around 110,000 visitors per year, with peaks of 122,000 visitors in 2006 and 160,000 in 2007. “Although,” says Saam, “the number of visitors remains exciting, for our stakeholders and for us.”
Years of shaky policy and a lack of vision had led to the museum struggling with mounting losses
The ‘unclear profile’ that the museum had to contend with has to do with its history: a merger between the Provincial Museum Kam (archaeology) and the Nijmegen Museum de Commanderie van Sint Jan (visual arts). The collection contains more than 90,000 archaeological artefacts and utensils from Antiquity, Roman times and the Middle Ages, and ancient and modern art. And although exhibitions were often well assessed, the visitor could not always discover a line in what he saw: one moment he was looking at the Romans and the next moment at a cutting from the eighteenth century, without the connection becoming clear, Saam said earlier.
“We now connect the past much more with the present,” says Saam, pointing to a display case with jewelry from prehistoric times and modern designs. “It could of course still be about the Romans, but then we always look for how we can connect that to current events. Based on the idea that what once happened shapes who we are today.”
Saam: “We, like the Frisian Museum, are strongly connected to the identity of this place. This has always been a border region, Nijmegen was once on the northern border of the Roman Empire, now on the border with Germany. The city has always been a meeting place for different cultures. That has become the foundation for this new museum.”
The portraits of 34 Nijmegen residents, photographed by Robin de Puy.
Photo Ivar Pel
Image from the exhibition ‘From Within’.
Photo Ivar Pel
Sculpture and slide in one
That band is also visible on the first floor; there are portraits of 34 Nijmegen residents, photographed by Robin de Puy. It is the introduction to the exhibition From Withinfor which the museum invited five artists to explore five emotions, inspired by objects from the collection – here work can be seen by, among others, the duo Gijs Frieling and Job Wouters and light artist Nick Verstand.
The Spanish sculptor Fernando Sánchez Castillo also refers in his exhibition Power of the people to the city: a number of its statues refer to the Roman emperors Augustus, Vespasian and Julius Civilis, all three connected to the history of Roman Nijmegen. Saam: “The scale models are in the hall. The enlarged versions will soon be on the square outside. His work is about serious matters such as power and the loss of power, but the images also have a funny, crazy twist. Look!” and she points to the cloak of Julius Civilis, which can soon serve as a slide on the square. “People can just sit on it and climb on it.”
Hedwig Saam (1960) will retire in October this year. Her successor is expected to be announced this summer. Isn’t it a shame that she cannot reap the benefits of eight years of directorship, which included no fewer than six years with a corona pandemic and a renovation? “I was able to give the museum a new start. The building is ready, the organization is solid and healthy, the exhibition program is in place until 2028. These were intensive years. Do you know that German saying: Art is beautiful, power over work? Haha, and that’s how it is. I think this is the right time to pass on the baton. It’s time for a fresh start.”