Museum Day: Gemeente Museum Den Haag

The Netherlands is full of museums, so we thought we'd take a few hours this weekend to check one out.

Up the road from our house is the Gemeente Museum Den Haag, or City Museum of The Hague, as well as the Museon and the Fotomuseum Den Haag. They all appear to be part of the same complex, only you're required to purchase a different ticket for each wing.

We originally set out to visit the Fotomuseum, but ended up in the Museon which is a family-oriented natural history museum. We asked the woman at the desk about seeing the photographs and she nodded and directed us through the door and to the left.

Though a bit confused we found ourselves in a really great photography exhibit on tour from the UK -- Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2005. In the end, we got to see a lot of great (and inspirational) nature shots.

Some of my favorites:
-- Egret in the Snow
-- Termite Catching
-- Japanese Macaque Eating Cherry Blossom
-- Mistaken Identity
-- Ancient Snow Gum
-- Elephants Below Mt. Kilimanjaro
-- Beech in the Mist
-- Lava by Moonlight
-- Red Squirrel Pose
-- Chimpanzee Meditation
-- Blue Dasher

With only 30 minutes left before closing, we headed over to the Gemeente Museum, which houses a really nice collection of early and late Piet Mondriaan paintings including the famous "Victory Boogie Woogie." To my surprise, the well-known colored squares of "Victory" were constructed with not just a little bit of electrical tape!

The maze-like interior of the Gemeente Museum begins in what looks (and even smells a bit) like a big tile bathroom. Then you sort of criss-cross through halls containing a mix of paintings, decorative art, antique furniture and several rooms of centuries-old gold and silver serving pieces made by artisans in The Hague.

To afford the luxury of a sprint through a museum, earlier we purchased Museum Kaarts for just under 30 Euro each. The cards get you into museums all over the country for no additional fee, as many times as you like, up to a year. You need only visit about 6 times to earn the price of the card.

While it's not quite the free admission we enjoyed in DC, the Museum Kaart does take the sting away a bit.