Allard Pierson Museum

Allard Pierson Museum

File:Nederlandsche Bank.jpg Museum in 2006
Location in the city center of Amsterdam
Established	12 November 1934 (1934-11-12)
Location	Oude Turfmarkt 127 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Coordinates
Type	Archaeological museum
Visitors	60,430 (2012)
Director	Wim Hupperetz
Owner	University of Amsterdam
Website	www.allardpiersonmuseum.nl

The Allard Pierson Museum is the archaeological museum of the University of Amsterdam. It is situated at the Oude Turfmarkt 127 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Artifacts from the ancient civilizations of ancient Egypt, the Near East, the Greek World, Etruria, and the Roman Empire are curated and exhibited in this museum.

Allard Pierson

The name of the Allard Pierson Museum derives from the first professor of classical archaeology at the University of Amsterdam, Allard Pierson (1831–1896). This former clergyman was invited in 1877 to occupy the chair of Aesthetics, Art History, and Modern Languages at the newly founded university. His passion for antiquity, fuelled by his travels to the Mediterranean area, led to his assembling a collection of plaster casts from 1877 to 1895.

Founding

The second professor of archeology at the University of Amsterdam, Jan Six, had a large personal collection of books and antique objects. At his death in 1926, the university had interest in acquiring his collection. In 1932, Pierson's son Jan Lodewijk established the Allard Pierson Foundation in order to make the antiquities collection available for research and teaching. The collection was brought to a building on the Weesperzijde in Amsterdam, with the top floor serving as a museum.

The collection grew due to purchases, gifts, and loans of artifacts and documents. On 12 November 1934, the Allard Pierson Museum was officially opened in a building at Sarphatistraat 129-131 (corner of the Roeterstraat). The museum eventually outgrew its building.

Building

A new building became available when the Nederlandse Bank vacated their office at the Oude Turfmarkt in 1976. H.R.H. Princess Beatrix attended the re-opening of the museum on 6 October 1976.

Collection

The museum has collections related to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, the Near East, the Greek World, Etruria, and the Roman Empire. The collections include art objects and utensils dating from 4000 BC to 500 AD. There are also scale models of ancient temples and buildings. In the Ancient Egypt exhibition there is a room dedicated to death, with mummies, sarcophagi, and a film showing the process of mummification. The plaster-cast attic, to be visited only with a guided tour, shows copies of Roman and Greek statues.

The museum's Greek pottery collection features examples of black-figure and red-figure pottery produced in the fifth and sixth centuries BC. A collection of Roman sarcophagi is also on display, including a rare wooden coffin from around 150 AD that is carved partly in the shape of the man within it.

• WLANL - andrevanb - terracotta etruskisch beeld van ingebakerde baby (2).jpg

  Etrurian statuette of a tightly wrapped baby, possibly consecrated to the gods to avert children's diseases. 3rd–2nd century BC

• WLANL - Pachango - Allard Pierson - Bronzen Romeinse kop van een jongen.jpg

  Bronze head of a Roman boy

• Osiris on Sarcophagus lid of Teuris (Allard Pierson museum Amsterdam, Egypt, Greek-Roman time) (4004387404).jpg

  Osiris on a sarcophagus lid, Egypt, 2nd century AD

• WLANL - 23dingenvoormusea - Spelende meisjes (1).jpg

  Girls playing. Pottery, Corinth, circa 300 BC

The Society of Friends

The exhibitions and activities of the museum are supported by the Society of Friends of the Allard Pierson Museum, established in 1969. The Society has around 1500 members at present.

External links

• Allard Pierson Museum