Searching for Meaning: The Power of Female Patronage at the Kröller-Müller Museum

The Museum and the Patroness

Helene Kröller-Müller was born on February 11, 1869 in Horst, a German town near Essen. Her family owned Wm H. Müller & Co, an iron and coal industry company with branches in Antwerp, Rotterdam, Luik, Ruhrort, London, and New York. In 1888, Helene married Anton Kröller, a Dutch industrialist working in her father’s company. Kröller went on to lead the Rotterdam branch of Wm H. Müller & Co and following Helene’s father’s death in 1889, became its leading director.

Kröller-Müller used to collect Asian objects, ceramics, and antique furniture—which was customary at the time. Between 1906 and 1907, she studied art with H. P. Bremmer, a Dutch painter who became known for teaching art appreciation to well-to-do individuals during the early 1900s. Bremmer introduced her to art forms and artists contemporary to them, especially artists who were then less known to the public—such as Vincent van Gogh, whom Bremmer greatly admired. Realizing their commercial potential helped Kröller-Müller start her career as an art collector.

Kröller-Müller purchased her first two Van Gogh paintings in 1907 for a tiny fraction of the prices his paintings would fetch later:

Helene Kröller-Müller has garnered a massive art collection of more than 11,500 objects over the years. She donated them on April 26, 1935 to the Dutch State. This generous gift was intended to be for a public-facing museum, which would later be built on the grounds of the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo.

By 1938, a new modernist museum designed by Belgian architect Henry van de Velde was erected on the grounds of the national park. Helene Kröller-Müller was appointed the first general director of the then Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, home for a large and well-curated collection of modernist artists whose names have risen to enormous fame today.

Searching for Meaning

The ongoing exhibition Searching for Meaning traces the spiritual journey of Helene Kröller-Müller as both a pioneering art collector and a trailblazing woman, whose personal life and convictions informed her art collection and resulted in the monumental legacy she left behind.

The exhibition’s title, Searching for Meaning, denotes an imaginative voyage of Kröller-Müller in which her intellectual encounters with artists, art movements, and religion converged. However, the current museum has gone beyond housing her art collections to build a tranquil sanctuary surrounded by nature and wildlife.

And a journey it still is. One has to take time to get first to the entrance gate located in a remote area and then bike (or walk) for at least 10 minutes across the beautiful park to get the first glimpse of the museum. The art as well as its milieu is an invitation for quiet and intimate contemplation away from the randstad, the Netherlands’ dense industrial and metropolitan region. There, one can find the largest cities: Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Since the beginning, Kröller-Müller was aware of the greatest works of German literature, such as that of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller. Her search for the meaning did not end there. Through Bremmer, she learned about the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, one of the most influential early modern thinkers championing reason before the European Enlightenment. Spinoza’s influence is seen in her life motto: Spiritus et Materia Unum, meaning “spirit and matter are one.” The museum’s emblem visualizes this maxim. Hanging on the the museum’s facades, it underlines the role of philosophy and spirituality in Kröller-Müller’s life.

The exhibition opens with Van Gogh’s Basket of Lemons and Bottle and guides the viewer through the neutral and calm afforded by various art forms grouped by the artist or art movement. Amid works by painters such as Vincent van Gogh, Odilon Redon, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and Piet Mondriaan, you will also encounter modern masters of the Dutch art scene—Johan Thorn Prikker, Jan Toorop, Jan Sluyters, and Charley Toorop. By following the exhibition, one learns about the special relationship Helene Kröller-Müller had with each object. This goes to show how conscientious and forward-thinking she was as an art collector.

The exhibition also comes with an audio tour, where a philosopher and a writer talk about seven works from a contemporary perspective.

For Westerners, the “scholar’s rocks,” or natural formations of stone or wood, are perhaps one of the less familiar objects on display. Yet, Chinese people began collecting them as far back as the Song Dynasty (920–1279). They have functioned as objects of contemplative meditation and philosophical inspiration ever since. As they conclude the exhibition, these works of nature raise questions not just as objets d’art. Shaped by the forces of nature but presented on custom-made wooden pedestals, they mirror the very idea of the museum itself, which attempts to blur the line between nature and nurture.

Searching for Meaning at Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo runs through May 11, 2025. Click here to learn more about it and book your tickets! Make sure to set aside an entire day for the exhibition, as well as the rest of the museum and the sculpture garden.