Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The 19th century building was designed by Adriaan Willem Weissman and the 21st century wing with the current entrance was designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects. It is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, where it is close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The collection comprises modern and contemporary art and design from the early 20th century up to the 21st century. It features artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Karel Appel, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Marlene Dumas, Lucio Fontana, and Gilbert & George. In 2015, the museum had an estimated 675,000 visitors. The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, opened on 14 September 1895 as an initiative of the local authority and private individuals. The Dutch Neo-Renaissance style museum building was designed by Dutch architect Adriaan Willem Weissman as part of a modernization project spearheaded by local citizens starting in 1850. The construction of the building was largely funded in 1890 by Sophia Adriana de Bruyn. Specifically, it was built under the Vereeniging tot het Vormen van een Verzameling van Hedendaagsche Kunst, which was founded in 1874, to house de Bruyn's collection of art and antiques that she donated to the city along with a considerable sum of money. The Van Eeghen family also contributed to the construction costs and donated paintings from the collection of Christiaan Pieter van Eeghen. The building was constructed between 1891 and 1895 at Paulus Potterstraat, a short walking distance from the Rijksmuseum. The museum's original collection included militaria of the Amsterdam militia, Asiatic art, and artifacts from the Museum of Chronometry and the Medical-Pharmaceutical Museum. In 1905, Cornelis Baard was appointed curator of the Stedelijk and promoted to museum director in 1920. During his time as curator, the local authority began building its own collection of modern art. The Great Depression in the Netherlands led to municipal cutbacks and an increased need for policy reviews in the first half of the 1930s. In 1932, a purchasing committee was established with two members from the VVHK and two from the local authority. These four figures oversaw all art purchases for the museum, notably works of Hague and Amsterdam Impressionism and pieces by international contemporaries. The museum began actively acquiring art in 1930. In 1933, M.B.B. Nijkerk's collection of books came to the Stedelijk, which was later expanded to include aesthetic book design and typography. The Museum of Applied Art opened on the ground floor of the west wing on 15 December 1934. This collection included furniture, glass, pottery, and china, graphic design and posters, textiles, small sculptures and masks, batik, metalwork, and stained glass with an emphasis on Dutch work from around the turn of the century. In 1936, David Roell, who had previously worked at the Rijksmuseum and was secretary of the VVHK, took over as museum director. Roell appointed Willem Sandberg as the new curator in January 1938. Sandberg eventually took over as director of the museum in 1945. By 1962, the VVHK handed over most of its collection, including works by George Hendrik Breitner, Paul Cezanne, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Vincent van Gogh, and Johan Jongkind. Under the direction of Sandberg, the Stedelijk started a department of applied art in 1945 and a department of prints and drawings in 1954. At the start of 1950, the Stedelijk also began to present modern music and films. The annex known as the Sandberg Wing was built in 1954 to accommodate experimental art. By 1956, a reading room, print room, a museum restaurant and garden, and a new auditorium for film screenings and musical performances were added. Sandberg acquired a group of works by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1958. In the same year, Sandberg began acquiring photography for the museum's collection; the Stedelijk was the first western European museum for modern art to collect photography. The collection includes seminal photographers of both the Dutch and international avant-garde in the interbellum period, an extensive selection of post-war Dutch photographers, artist portraits, photojournalism, and autonomous fine art photography from the 1970s onward. During World War II, the Stedelijk collection and that of the Amsterdam Museum were transferred for safekeeping to a bunker in the sand-hills near Santpoort. Museum staff took turns keeping watch.