About our collection
The Centraal Museum has existed since 1838, making it the oldest municipal museum in the Netherlands. The museum manages a diverse collection of art, city history, fashion, and applied arts, most of which is owned by the municipality of Utrecht.
The collection consists of over 70,000 objects. Because we present ever-changing selections, only a portion of the collection is displayed in the museum buildings.Here you can read more about our collection, conservation and research, collaborations, and our loan policy.
Collection highlights
Practical information
Bijzondere collecties
Ontdek onze bijzondere collecties, zoals de Van Baaren collectie, de collectie Dick Bruna, Het Rietveld Schröder Archief en meer.
Van Baaren Collection
The Van Baaren collection, brought together between 1925 and 1964 by Utrecht's private individuals Josephina and Lambertus van Baaren, with its nineteenth and early twentieth century collection of visual arts, is an important core of the Centraal Museum that functions as a museum window into international developments in painting. It is a good example of a typical private collection created under the influence of art educator Bremmer. When the museum came to the museum in 1980, the collection of art from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was significantly improved at once.
The highlights in this sub-collection include works by Vincent van Gogh, Auguste Herbin, Jean Metzinger, Floris Verster, Johan Bartold Jongkind and Piet Mondrian, among others.
Theo van Doesburg Collection
Theo van Doesburg was born on August 30, 1883 as Christian Emil Marie Küpper. Early on, he took the name of his stepfather and actual educator Theodorus Doesburg, and later added “van”. Van Doesburg was an art critic, painter, poet, Dada performer, and founder of De Stijl. In 1920, he met Nelly van Moorsel, a gifted pianist who performed avant-garde compositions at Dada nights. Van Doesburg and Van Moorsel became inseparable. After Van Doesburg's death in 1931, Nelly worked to promote de Stijl and her husband's work. Nelly died in 1975, leaving the legacy to her cousin Wies van Moorsel. This in turn gave Van Doesburg's enormous collection of sketches and designs to the Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, the current Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.
In 1999, during the preparations for the major Theo van Doesburg retrospective exhibition (2000), the Centraal Museum decided to take that collection on permanent loan: this Utrecht artist's work and ideas were made available for study.
Dick Bruna Collection
In 2000, the Centraal Museum organized a retrospective exhibition of the work of Dick Bruna (Utrecht 1927-2017 Utrecht). As a result, a start was made to hand over the thousands of designs, drawings, posters, clippings, etc. to the museum. Bruna became known worldwide with his creation of miffy ('miffy'). However, the book covers and posters that he has designed for A.W. Bruna & Zoon publishing house since 1952 deserve at least as much attention.
In his studio in an attic in the city center of Utrecht, Dick Bruna (1927 - 2017) made his drawings and designs for years. This studio has had a permanent place in the Centraal Museum since 2016.
The Rietveld Schröder Archive
Truus Schröder admired Rietveld immensely. She was one of the first to recognize his qualities and encouraged him to become an architect. The assignment for the Schröder House was a breakthrough in his career. Even after that, she supported Rietveld in many ways. This included collecting and storing his drawings, photos of his work, correspondence, clippings and other documentation. Rietveld had his studio on the ground floor of the Schröder House from 1924 to 1933. Truus Schröder and he often worked together on important projects. After the death of his wife in 1957, he moved in with her. The Schröder House, the projects between 1924 and 1933 and the period from 1958 onwards are exceptionally well documented. But the archive also contains a wealth of information about the other work.
In 1985, the Schröder House and the Rietveld Schröder Archives were managed by the Centraal Museum. Thanks to donations and purchases, it has almost doubled since then. Just as Truus Schröder envisioned, the archive has thus become an important source for research into Rietveld's life, ideas and work.
The Pug Collection
The Provincial Utrecht Society of Arts and Sciences (PUG) started collecting “Antiquities” in 1841. Roman glasses and cups, gold and silver coins and jewelry, beautifully decorated terra sigillata pottery, oil lamps, markers and belt buckles. The impressive collection of around 15,000 archaeological finds consists mainly of Roman objects, but prehistory and the Middle Ages are also represented. The objects partly come from excavations in Utrecht and the surrounding area, including around the Domplein, near Fort Vechten and De Meern.
The Centraal Museum and the Pug Collection have been closely linked since 1921. Initially, the collection was exhibited in the museum's basement and later in the adjacent Renswoude Foundation, where it would remain until 2010.
In 1995, the Provincial Utrecht Society handed over the collection to the municipality of Utrecht.
