After eight years of curating exhibitions for other museums and the pop-up location ‘Portrait Gallery Studio’ at the Marineterrein (Amsterdam), Dutch National Portrait Gallery will focus the coming period on realizing a virtual museum, several pop-up museums and eventually – like National Portrait Galleries worldwide – our own museum.

The first National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1822 in Sweden. There are now eight such museums, the best known of which are in London, Washington, Edinburgh and Canberra. Still this decade, the Dutch National Portrait Gallery will have its own museum.

The Dutch National Portrait Gallery strives for appreciation of portraiture in the past, present and future, portraying human beings in all their aspects. We show portraits of the heroes and the dead, but also of the living, the unknown, the villains, and those who deviate from the norm. To this end, portraiture is an inexhaustible and approachable art form, to which the viewer can easily relate. One recognizes oneself in portraits – and one can try to understand the other person. Addressing this identification, in which there is room for all possible differences and similarities on an inclusive basis, is the strength of portrait art as propagated by Dutch National Portrait Gallery.