Moco Museum occupies the Villa Alsberg on Amsterdam’s Museumplein.
We had a few hours without anything particular planned in Amsterdam and were staying at citizenM Amstel. Museumplein was within easy reach, so we headed in that direction and decided to visit Moco Museum.
Moco stands for “Modern Contemporary,” which gives a reasonable indication of what you’ll find inside. The Amsterdam museum occupies Villa Alsberg, a historic house on Museumplein, almost directly alongside the considerably larger Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum.
The art starts outside, before you enter the museum itself.
The original house remains very much visible behind the art.
The building is part of the experience. Rather than large purpose-built galleries, you move through the rooms, corridors and staircases of the old house. Original windows and stained glass remain visible, sometimes immediately alongside works that could hardly be further removed from the surroundings in which they are displayed.
We didn’t arrive with a list of particular things we wanted to see. That works perfectly well at Moco. There are enough immediately recognizable artists and works that you can simply make your way through the building and see what you encounter.
Banksy’s Love is in the Air, one of several works by the artist on display.
Banksy’s Girl with Balloon. The glass also caught the reflection of another visitor.
Banksy has a substantial presence, including Love Is in the Air and Girl with Balloon, while Keith Haring, KAWS, Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama are among the other recognizable names represented.
There was much more than the familiar names, though. The Javier Calleja rooms were particularly distinctive visually, while elsewhere we came across the KAWS × Estudio Campana Monster Chair, made from red plush figures, among a much wider range of works and installations.
A Keith Haring subway drawing, with the museum providing useful context alongside it.
The villa itself remains visible throughout the galleries, including its original stained glass.
Javier Calleja gets several rooms within the museum.
More Javier Calleja works in one of the villa’s smaller gallery rooms.
And yes, we also found what appeared to be a chair made from Elmos.
KAWS is another of the recognizable names represented in the collection.
Takashi Murakami’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton gets its own unmistakable display.
As we continued through the museum, the presentation changed as well. The traditional rooms of Villa Alsberg eventually gave way to darker spaces containing illuminated and digital installations. That made the latter part of the visit quite different visually from the galleries where we had started.
Yayoi Kusama’s work is presented in a dark, polka-dotted gallery, a sharp contrast with the villa rooms upstairs.
Some rooms use the architecture of the villa as part of the installation rather than simply hanging work on its walls.
The visit eventually moves beyond conventional gallery displays into digital work.
A visitor stops in front of an illuminated work by Hajime Sorayama.
We enjoyed visiting Moco, and it turned out to be particularly well suited to the few hours we had available. We weren’t looking to devote the day to a museum; we had some free time in Amsterdam, headed over to Museumplein and found something genuinely interesting without building the day around it.