Van Gogh Museum in fight with Dutch state that threatens its future

AMSTERDAM – The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, home to the largest collection of works by one of the world’s most loved artists, is embroiled in a bitter feud over financing with the Dutch Ministry of Culture that could lead to its closure if left unresolved much longer.

The museum, a national treasure that attracts some 1.8 million visitors a year, needs a refurbishment to preserve its more than 200 paintings and nearly 500 drawings by Vincent van Gogh, but two years of negotiations with the ministry over funding have reached an impasse, said Ms Emilie Gordenker, the museum’s director.

“If this situation persists, it will be dangerous for the art and dangerous for our visitors,” said Ms Gordenker, who took over at the museum in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. “This is the last thing we want – but if it comes to that, we would have to close the building.”

That claim is supported by an independent committee, which raised serious concerns about the building in a report published in 2024.

The museum has sought a US$2.9 million (S$3.7 million) increase in its annual government subsidy of some US$10 million to pay for repairs to its climate control system and elevators, and to improve fire safety, security and sustainability.

The ministry says the museum should cover the shortfall itself.

The museum has now filed a legal complaint against the state that is likely to lead to a court hearing in the next several months.

The complaint contends that the Dutch state is in breach of a 1962 agreement that it signed with the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, which was established in 1960 by the artist’s nephew and heir to preserve a large collection of works that were unsold when the artist died.

Under the accord, the state undertook to build a museum in central Amsterdam and “to ensure the material preservation of the collections, as if they were its own property”. Not a single work remained in the family; Vincent van Gogh’s entire personal collection, today worth billions of dollars, passed to the foundation and from there to the museum.

So it came to be that Bedroom in Arles, Wheatfield With Crows, Sunflowers, Almond Blossom and countless other masterpieces were housed together in a museum on Amsterdam’s Museumplein.

This unusual act of foresight and generosity, orchestrated by the younger Vincent van Gogh (named for his artist uncle), headed off potential family feuds over the inheritance and so bestowed van Gogh’s luminous artistic genius on all humanity when the museum opened in 1973.

The artist shot himself in the chest on July 27, 1890, while living in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town north-west of Paris. He died two days later at age 37 with his brother Theo at his side. Mr Theo van Gogh, an art dealer who was very close to his sibling, died six months later at the age of 33.

It was Mr Theo’s widow Jo van Gogh-Bonger who dedicated her life to preserving the collection that was passed to their son, and from him to the foundation he established.

In response to questions, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science rejected the museum’s position.

It said in a statement: “The subsidy for the housing of the Van Gogh Museum is a fixed amount that is corrected for inflation on an annual basis. The subsidy is calculated according to a methodology which is used for all national museums.”

Under this methodology, on which it did not elaborate, the ministry said the “Van Gogh Museum receives one of the highest subsidies per square metre of all national museums”. It contended that “the use of this methodology and its outcome for the Van Gogh Museum do not constitute a violation of the 1962 agreement”.

The ministry said it would respond in due course to the arguments made “in the legal proceedings initiated by the museum”.

The New York Times asked the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, which owns almost all of the van Gogh works in the museum, what it thought of the ministry’s refusal to increase funding to safeguard a museum for which tourists scramble to get tickets.

It responded with a statement from the van Gogh family, which makes up most of the foundation’s board, saying that it fully supported the museum management and was “deeply concerned about the accessibility of the van Gogh collection”.

“The 1962 law and thus the agreement with the state are still in force,” it said. “The state must therefore ensure funding for sustainable facilities that will make the collection optimally accessible to current and future generations.”

Otherwise, the state would violate its “statutory obligations”, the family said.

The estimate for the entire museum renovation is US$121 million, of which US$88 million would go towards maintenance and structural modernisation, US$23 million for sustainability measures, and the balance for other improvements, the museum said.

As the highest-earning public museum in the Netherlands, it covers about 85 per cent of its budget from income like ticket sales and revenue from its store and cafe. But it says it needs more money for the refurbishment, especially as the museum’s partial closure during the three years of construction will lead to an estimated revenue loss of US$29 million.

“This is not sexy stuff. We are not building a glamorous new wing. It’s just essential basic maintenance, the same way you need to replace your refrigerator every 15 years,” said Ms Gordenker, who was raised in Princeton, New Jersey, and has dual Dutch and American citizenship.

“We’ve checked and double-checked, done different scenarios, and we’re coming up short about US$35 million that we believe an annual subsidy increase in perpetuity of US$2.9 million would cover,” Ms Gordenker said. “It would prepare us for the long term.”

Any museum receiving a subsidy from the Dutch state is required to have an independent assessment of its condition every four years. A report on the Van Gogh Museum by an independent committee that conducted extensive interviews and inspections was published in 2024.

It said that “there are serious concerns about the museum building in Amsterdam, which is increasingly showing deficiencies, particularly in the installations and structural condition”, and that the replacement of many features was needed to “maintain the condition and safety of the collection”.

The 2024 report added: “Without essential interventions, the building will pose a risk to visitors, staff and the collection, and the museum will therefore ultimately be unable to remain open.”

The ministry argued in its statement that the museum could use low-cost financing provided by the government, as well as its own “substantial equity”. The museum rejects this, saying that its resources are already stretched and that it will have to introduce cost-saving measures to mitigate revenue loss during reconstruction.

“We hope the new minister will take a fresh look at our situation,” Ms Gordenker said, “and come to the conclusion that the 1962 agreement is a promise the government needs to keep.” NYTIMES