It has been announced that The Hague city council has granted credit facilities for transforming the former US Embassy in the Lange Voorhout into a new museum and permanent home for the city’s collection of the more than one thousand artworks by Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972). Designed by Marcel Breuer and opened in July 1959, the building, across the road from the Koninklijke Schouwburg, has become an iconic city landmark. The US Embassy moved to new premises a few kilometres away in Wassenaar in 2018.
The collection of the artist’s prints and artefacts is currently on show at Escher in het Paleis, two hundred metres further along Lange Voorhout, opposite the Hotel Des Indes, where it has been since 2002. Visitor numbers have grown steadily rising to 187,000 in 2023. The collection is managed by the city’s Kunstmuseum. Jet de Ranitz, chair of the Supervisory Board of Escher in The Palace / Kunstmuseum Den Haag said, “The award of the credit facility is an important step on the way to a new and inspiring home for the Escher collection, working in close and effective collaboration with The Hague city council.”
Escher is one of the world’s most recognisable artists. His prints of logic defying images can be seen on everything from plates to tea-towel, from posters to fabrics and every other imaginable surface. The pictures distort perspective, space and time, transforming the commonplace into something extraordinary.
