Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to visit a professional artwork storage? If not, the winter holidays are the time of year when it’s worth it. In fact, museum depositories are the whole mysterious kingdom, and some of them are open to the public. So, if you are a bit tired of visiting museums but still want some cultural recreation opportunities, then your attention will be caught by this blog post.
3 Places with an Open Artwork Storage
Well, some of the museum depositories have their own buildings that work parallel to their main buildings and wait for their visitors. Most of them allow you to visit their depositories with a guided tour only, but it’s still an interesting event where you can get a behind-the-scenes look at the daily life of museums. Here is a list of art depositories that are open to the public.
1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
There are more than a hundred reasons to love The Met, but we can add one more: it has an open-access storage area with collections that are not on display in the main galleries. The center is called The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art, and the works there are organized by material (ceramics, metal, wood, glass, canvas, etc.), form, and chronology. The exhibits change regularly, so it would be exciting to visit this place more than once in a lifetime.
2. Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
This large open-access artwork storage was opened to the public in 2021. Visitors can see how works of art are stored when they are not on display. To date, the collection of the Depot consists of approximately 151,000 objects. The storage rooms are divided into five “climate zones” where climate control systems create the most comfortable conditions for certain types of items: paintings, sculptures, photographs, metal products, etc. Museum architecture is also worth a look: it was designed by the prominent contemporary architecture bureau MVRDV in the shape of a glass vase. There is a birch garden on the roof, which is also open to visitors.
3. The Polytechnic Museum, Moscow
Since the beginning of the reconstruction of the building of the Polytechnic Museum, its collection has been opened to visitors in the area far from the city center. There, you can see unique objects and mechanisms, from old cars to the first robots, which are stored on custom racks and can be seen during the guided tour.
We wish you pleasant holidays and hope that you’ll have exciting times in museums and galleries!