Books & ArtsAccess to art -- The mixing potA museum opens up its collectionThe new home for the collection of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, a gorgeous 40-metre-tall mirrored flowerpot that is set to become Rotterdam’s signature building, had its origins in an extremely Dutch emergency.The basement that held the museum’s undisplayed art -- 151,000 objects, among the Netherlands’ most important collections -- was six metres below sea level, and kept flooding.The city had constructed a garage under an adjacent park which interfered with drainage.Sjarel Ex, the museum’s director, could have built a storage facility in a suburb, but wanted a way to keep the trove on site, and to open it to the public.Mr Ex asked for ideas from Winy Maas of MVRDV, a leading Dutch architecture firm.The first concept was a gigantic table perched above the park, from which artworks could be lowered for spectators.This proved impractical, but during a brainstorming session Mr Maas plopped a tea cup onto a model of the park, then noticed a mirrored kettle nearby.The cup’s curve gave it a narrow base, which would leave more room for pedestrians; the reflective surface of the kettle melded with the surroundings.More than a decade after that epiphany, the building known simply as “Depot” opened to visitors on November 6th.
