- Louwman Museum, entrance
- Two of the museum's Cords
- The former Nationaal Automobiel Museum
- Spyker 60 H.P. (1903)
- Duesenberg SJ LaGrande Dual Cowl Phaeton (1935)
- Fiat 1100 Boat-Car (1953)
- The Brooke Swan Car (1910)
Former name | Nationaal Automobiel Museum |
---|---|
Established | 1969 |
Location | 1969–1981: Leidschendam 1981–2010: Raamsdonksveer since 2010: The Hague, Netherlands |
Type | Car museum |
Website | http://www.louwmanmuseum.nl |
The Louwman Museum is a museum for historic cars, coaches, and motorcycles in The Hague, Netherlands. [1] It has been situated on the Leidsestraatweg near the A44 motorway since 2010. The museum's former names are "Nationaal Automobiel Museum" and "Louwman Collection". [2]
The collection consists of around 275 cars and other vehicles. [3] It was founded in 1934 with the purchase of a 20-year-old Dodge by Dodge importer Pieter Louwman, the father of the current owner. In 1969, the collection of Mr. Geerlig Riemer was added. Riemer was also founder of the Institute for Automotive and Management (IVA) in Driebergen. The building which used to house Riemer's collection has since been used as a practical center for the IVA.
In 1969 the collection was moved to Leidschendam to the newly opened National Automobile Museum. In 1981 the museum was moved to a new location on the property of importer Louwman & Parqui in Raamsdonksveer. On 18 April 2003 the name "Louwman Collection" was adopted.
On 3 July 2010 the current museum in The Hague, named Louwman Museum, was opened by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, whose former home Huis ten Bosch neighbours the museum. [4] The current owner of the collection is Evert Louwman, the Dutch importer of Lexus, Toyota, and Suzuki. [5]
The Louwman Museum is housed in a building with three floors and over 10,000 m² of exhibition space, on The Hague's Leidsestraatweg. It was specifically designed as a museum by Driehaus Prize winner Michael Graves, a New Classical American architect. Incorporating a view of the surrounding environment was an important part of the large-scale design. [6] Landscape architect Louis Baljon designed the layout of the park encircling the building. [7]
Evert Louwman is the brother of Jan Louwman, owner of the former Wassenaar Zoo, which closed in 1985. The zoo used to have a gate with two brick pillars on which two lions stood. This old gate became the entrance to the new museum.
The collection has an international outlook and consists of around 275 automobiles. The museum has the largest collection of cars in the world from 1910 or older. [8] The museum displays a large collection of the current remaining 15 classic cars of the Dutch brand Spyker and the only remaining Eysink (a car-brand from Amersfoort). [9] In the former museum of Raamsdonksveer these Dutch cars used to be displayed at the so-called "Trompenburg Square" with original fence of the original Spyker-factory, dismantled in 1993.
From post-World War II the museum features a car of Winston Churchill, the Aston Martin DB5 used in the James Bond movie Goldfinger, and a Cadillac of Elvis Presley.
The former collection of old cars of the Dutch Autotron in Rosmalen had been on display since 2005 in Raamsdonksveer, and was moved to the new museum in The Hague. The Autotron has not had an automotive museum since its reorganisation in 2007.
In 2009, the museum acquired the 1913 Black Bess, a Bugatti Type 18, owned first by World War I flying ace Roland Garros (1888-1918) and then by British racing driver Ivy Cummings (1900-1971) who gave the car its name. [10] [11]
The museum also displays a large collection of paintings and drawings by Frederick Gordon Crosby. [12]
The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw.
The Mauritshuis is an art museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The museum houses the Royal Cabinet of Paintings which consists of 854 objects, mostly Dutch Golden Age paintings. The collection contains works by Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen, Paulus Potter, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, Hans Holbein the Younger, and others. Originally, the 17th-century building was the residence of Count John Maurice of Nassau. The building is now the property of the government of the Netherlands and is listed in the top 100 Dutch heritage sites.
Spyker or Spijker was a Dutch carriage, automobile and aircraft manufacturer, started in 1880 by blacksmiths Jacobus and Hendrik-Jan Spijker. Originally located in Hilversum, the company relocated to Trompenburg, Amsterdam in 1898.
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Drunen is a town in the municipality of Heusden in southern Netherlands. The town is part of a region called the Langstraat which is historically known for its leather and shoe industry. Since 1813, Drunen had been a separate municipality, consisting of the towns Drunen, Elshout, and Giersbergen. As of 2017, Drunen's population is 18,216.
The Bugatti Type 18, also called the Garros, is an automobile produced from 1912 through 1914. Produced shortly after the start of the business, the design was something of a relic. It had much in common with the cars Ettore Bugatti had designed for Deutz Gasmotoren Fabrik but with the radiator of the Type 13. Only seven examples were built, and three are known to survive.
The Kunstmuseum Den Haag is an art museum in The Hague in the Netherlands, founded in 1866 as the Museum voor Moderne Kunst. Later, until 1998, it was known as Haags Gemeentemuseum, and until the end of September 2019 as Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. It has a collection of around 165,000 works, over many different forms of art. In particular, the Kunstmuseum is renowned for its large Mondrian collection, the largest in the world. Mondrian's last work, Victory Boogie-Woogie, is on display at the museum.
Spyker Cars is a Dutch sports car brand held by the holding company Spyker N.V.. The modern Spyker Cars held the legal rights to the brand name. The company's motto is "Nulla tenaci invia est via", Latin for "For the tenacious, no road is impassable". The marque's logo displays an aircraft propeller superimposed over a spoked wheel, a reference to the historic Spyker company that manufactured automobiles and aircraft. In 2010, the company acquired Swedish car manufacturer Saab Automobile from General Motors.
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Rein Jansma was a Dutch architect and co-founder of the architectural studio ZJA.
The Fotomuseum Den Haag is a photography museum in The Hague. The museum was founded in 2002. It was a spin-off of the nearby Kunstmuseum Den Haag, when then director Wim van Krimpen decided that the Kunstmuseum's collection of photography had become so rich that it deserved a separate location. It shares an entrance and space with the museum of contemporary art KM21.
Wim Quist was a Dutch architect. Part of the modernist tradition of architecture, his style was dominated by rectangular, triangular and circular forms. His buildings focussed on the relationship between the building and its surroundings, with the function of the building itself being central. He rejected the use of unnecessary decoration. He continued designing buildings from 1960 until retiring in 2003 - his architectural legacy is now visible all over the Netherlands.
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