Museum

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will receive an impressive and unique library of surrealism. The library is an important addition to the museum’s world-famous collection of surrealism and comes from the collector couple Laurens Vancrevel and Frida de Jong.

The donation includes monographs, catalogs and literature on Surrealism and ranges from poetry and prose to essays published in various languages. More than four thousand often unique titles from the founding of surrealism to the present day will be transferred to Boijmans at a date to be determined. Thanks to the donation, the museum will in future have a very extensive collection of surrealist publications. As a result of this, the museum wanted to open a study center to study surrealism, which will be a world first.

Enrichment of Boijmans’ surrealism collection

The Boijmans collection of surrealism has been brought together since the 1960s. This collection makes Rotterdam the only city in the Netherlands that has a core collection of surrealism at world level, with masterpieces by, among others, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. The library’s current collection of surrealist editions is related to the museum’s art collection, as well as many general basic works by surrealist authors. What is special about the donated library is that it contains a real study and work collection, which has been gradually built up since 1960 and fully reflects the cohesion of all the arts and political ideas within Surrealism. The collection also provides a good impression of the strong international character of the movement. Curator of modern and contemporary art, Saskia van Kampen-Prein: “With this generous donation, the traditional division between surrealist art and literature is dissolved.”

Study center

In the future knowledge center of the museum, which is being realized as part of the renovation, the pieces from the existing collection of surrealist publications by Boijmans and the library of Vancrevel and De Jong can be consulted in the study center on surrealism to be set up for this purpose. The center will be open to anyone interested in surrealism; lovers of surreal art and literature as well as professionals. For the time being, there is no comparable, comprehensive library of surrealism anywhere. Of course there are other libraries worldwide that have many surrealist publications, but they are not as complete as Boijmans’s will be in the future. The titles from the Bibliothèque Kandinsky in Paris and the library of the MoMA in New York, for example, are mainly focused on the visual arts of surrealism. Laurens Vancrevel and Frida de Jong: “It is a brilliant idea by Sjarel Ex to set up a study center on surrealism in the museum’s planned knowledge center. This is a striking novelty for the museum presentation of surrealist art, not only in our own country, but also internationally. This makes it clear that in surrealism, as a philosophy of creativity, visual art is not separate from poetry and the creator’s philosophy of life. Our surrealism library will be able to come into its own there. ”

Vancrevel and De Jong

Boijmans has had a warm relationship with Vancrevel and De Jong for years and the couple have been closely involved with the museum for a long time. A few years ago, Vancrevel wrote an article about the museum’s collection of surrealist publications for the file catalog “A Dream Collection.” Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen ‘which was published in 2017. In the years that followed, he and De Jong donated 50 works of art to the museum by surrealists such as J.H. Moesman, Willem van Leusden, Kristians Tonny, Jan Schlechter Duvall, Theo van Baaren and Her de Vries. Curator Saskia van Kampen-Prein and Vancrevel are currently writing a Boijmans Study about this. This richly illustrated edition will be published in the fall of 2021 under the title “Creative Coincidence.” Surrealism from the collection of Laurens Vancrevel and Frida de Jong. “After these previous contributions and art gifts, Vancrevel and De Jong now also donate their library of surrealism to Boijmans.

Special art gift

Every year, Boijmans Van Beuningen receives an average of a few hundred gifts. Major donations recently received by the museum were those from Frans Koster and Leen Quist, including European modern ceramics, and those from Cor de Wit and Sjoukje de Wit-Jelsma, with Scandinavian glassware. However, such donations are seldom as extensive as the surrealism library of Vancrevel and De Jong. In addition, their donation fits in extremely well with surrealism as one of the focal points of the museum.

Source: Press release Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Image: Work by Theo van Baaren, Offer, 1989. Gift from the artist to Laurens Vancrevel and Frida de Jong in 1989 and donated to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 2018