One of the things I love about traveling to major cities is that it gives me an opportunity to visit world-class museums. I’ve had the good fortune to be able to tour some of the greats—the Musee du Louvre, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to name a few—and I always look forward to discovering new gems.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Amsterdam, and I was really impressed by the amazing art scene there. During our stay, we toured three very different art museums, each offering a unique setting and featuring incredible art.

We started with the Rijksmuseum, where we viewed Dutch Masterworks by Rembrandt van Rijn and Johannes Vermeer. The fact that I was viewing these paintings in Amsterdam, the city that played home to these great artists, made the experience even more special.

After exiting the Rijksmuseum, we crossed a lovely courtyard to visit the adjacent Van Gogh Museum, home to the world’s largest collection of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. This amazing collection was housed in a beautiful, modern space flooded with natural light. We were fortunate enough to visit during a special exhibit of original French Belle Epoque posters, which I loved. 

Later in the day, we visited the Hermitage Amsterdam, an outpost of the Hermitage Museum in Russia. Located on the Amstel River, this museum afforded us the opportunity to view more Dutch masterworks, along with a special exhibit about the fall of the Tsar of Russia.

Later in the week, I visited the cute boutiques located in the Little Nine Streets, a shopping district near the three original canals of Amsterdam, all of which have been classified a Unesco World Heritage Site. While browsing, I noticed that many of the shops and cafes featured whimsical modern art and fresh graphic posters, a testament to this city’s abiding love of art and design.

I like to purchase postcards and small prints to commemorate my travels, and I found the perfect option at a clothing store called King Louie: a set of charming postcards featuring portraits of animals styled like 17^thcentury Dutch merchants. I felt they were a whimsical, irreverent take on the classic Dutch Masterworks I’d seen earlier in the week—a perfect blend of the old Amsterdam and the new.

When I arrived home, I decided to create a small gallery wall in my living room featuring the postcards and a few other lovely prints I’d purchased as mementos.

This is one of several gallery walls in my home, each featuring a different destination. I like to use simple black gallery frames with creamy-white mattes, and I often augment the framed prints with fun three-dimensional pieces that accent the art. In this case, I added papier mache bird heads from Cody Foster.

This is one of the focal points of our great room, and I think of our trip every time I walk past it.

Have you ever found a great piece of art during your travels? I’d love to hear about your finds.

Until next time!

Stephanie