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Van Gogh Museum Director cuts visitor numbers after 'too much growth'

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The Director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Emilie Gordenker, has said suppressing the museum’s visitor figures is one of her proudest achievements in her role.


Gordenker revealed the Dutch museum has deliberately reduced attendance by 400,000, an 18% reduction from a high of 2.25 million visitors in 2017.



Speaking in an interview with the Times newspaper, she said reducing visitor numbers was an attempt to emphasise visit quality over quantity.


People observe art in a warmly lit gallery inside the Van Gogh Museum. A man and woman sit on a bench using phones. Paintings in golden frames adorn the walls.
A gallery inside the Van Gogh Museum. Photo: Jelle Draper

“The museum had been doing fabulously well, growing and growing and growing. Actually it had got too much” she said. This had resulted in the visitor experience becoming “a bit unpleasant.” During the pandemic’s forced closures of the venue, she decided it was time to look properly at the numbers.


“What we decided to do would be to privilege quality over quantity. So we really thought about the visitor experience. We were actually the first museum, to my mind, that did this.”


Now “there are no queues," she said.


But Gordenker did admit it was difficult when visitors eager to see Van Gogh's masterpieces still arrived without pre-booking and “we have to say: I’m really sorry — we don’t have any space today.”


In the same interview she called climate protesters who target paintings — including two attacks made on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery by the group Just Stop Oil — “disingenuous” for claiming art works are protected because they are behind glass.


Just Stop Oil activists have thrown tomato soup over Van Gogh's masterpiece Sunflowers at the National Gallery

To assess the vandalised work, “it requires that the painting be removed” she said, emphasising that “any movement of a picture is a risk.” The other impacts were that “It costs money. It also deprives the visitors from seeing the paintings.”


She said that the protesters’ ongoing actions are now a factor in deciding future loans.


Gordenker was speaking to the Times ahead of one of 2025’s most anticipated art exhibitions, when the Van Gogh Museum and its next-door neighbour the Stedelijk Museum will host a major showing of work of artist Anselm Kiefer. It will be the first time the two venues have collaborated on one show, and it will mark Kiefer’s 80th birthday.


“Kiefer is basically one of the greatest artists of our time,” Gordenker said. “If you don’t know him yet, you really should.”

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