Huis Marseille is a photography museum in Amsterdam. Established in 1999, it was the first museum in the Netherlands devoted exclusively to photography as an art form. The museum is housed in two 17th-century monumental canal houses at Keizersgracht 401, dating from 1665, and is located within the Canal District, a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The museum offers a diverse exhibition program and stands out for the unique historical ambiance of its two seventeenth-century canal houses. Many original details have been preserved, including ceiling paintings, stucco work, marble finishes, and a Louis XIV-style room featuring a red interior; the building was restored and the museum extended into the adjacent building in 2007–2013.David Rosenberg, "Jacqueline Hassink: View, Kyoto": "Our Seven Favorite Photography Shows From 2014", David Rosenberg and Jordan G. Teicher, Behold photography blog, Slate, 26 December 2014.ANP, "Fotografiemuseum Huis Marseille vernieuwd", De Volkskrant, 6 September 2013
Huis Marseille deviates from the traditional "white cube" layout. Its authentic, light-filled spaces enhance the presentation and experience of the photographic works. In addition, the museum features a photography library, a specialized photobook store, and a canal garden with a historic garden house.
History The museum Huis Marseille takes its name from the building in which it is housed. The monumental canal house is built around 1665 for the French merchant Isaac Focquier. On the building's classical façade, Focquier placed a stone depicting the layout of the French port city of Marseille. The ship he had outfitted in Marseille, which brought him to Amsterdam, made him a wealthy man.
For several years, he was a member of Amsterdam's College van Commercie (College of Commerce), where his experience as a successful merchant allowed him to influence trade matters. His involvement with the commission coincided with the construction of his house on the Keizersgracht, underscoring his status as a respectable figure. Focquier had distinguished himself and risen to the highest circles of Amsterdam, an elite class of affluent, self-assured men immortalized in group portraits such as Rembrandt’s Syndics of the Drapers' Guild (De Staalmeesters).
The houses Three hundred years later, the original seventeenth-century layout of the house—consisting of a 'front' segment, a courtyard, a 'back' segment and garden—is still largely intact.Huis Marseille,"Information about the house", 19 May 2016
In the current garden room hangs an original ceiling painting from 1730, specially created for the house by Jacob de Wit, the leading decorator of the 18th century. The work depicts Apollo, seated on the clouds, flanked by Minerva and the nine Muses. The ceiling piece was housed in the Rijksmuseum for many years but returned to its original location in 2004, after a thorough restoration, on loan from the Royal Archaeological Society (Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap).
In September 2013, the museum was expanded to include the neighboring building at Keizersgracht 399, providing the museum with more exhibition space, a larger library, and its own collection storage. The first exhibition in the expanded Huis Marseille took place in September 2013. Since the expansion in 2013, Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, consists of two connected buildings. Both buildings have five floors accessible to visitors, with a total of fourteen different exhibition rooms.
The most striking feature of the extension is a Louis XIV-style room from the early 18th century. Over the decades, the room has featured various colors. Beneath the last cream-colored layer of paint, olive green, earth-toned, and scarlet pigments were found. This particular shade of red is almost unique in the Netherlands in a reference room. In consultation with the Bureau for Monuments and Archaeology (Bureau Monumenten en Archeologie), it was decided to restore the detailed red wall and ceiling moldings to their original state.
Selected exhibitions
Some of the exhibitions that have taken place at Huis Marseille:
2007: David Goldblatt: Intersections 2007: Jacqueline Hassink: The Power Show 2009: Edward Burtynsky: Oil 2011: Scarlett Hooft Graafland: Soft Horizons 2012: Yasusuke Ota: The Abandoned Animals of Fukushima 2012: Viviane Sassen: In and out of fashion 2013: Rob Hornstra: Gouden jaren 2014: Apartheid & After 2014: Taco Anema: In Conference. Portraits of Dutch Administrative Boards 2015: Cor Jaring: Cor was hier 2016: Stephan Shore: Retrospective 2016: Dana Lixenberg: Imperial Courts Eddo Hartmann: Setting the Stage: Pyongyang, North Korea, Part 2 2017: Jeff Cowen: Photoworks 2017: Jamie Hawkesworth: Landscape with Tree 2017: Joscha Steffens: Teen Spirit Island 2018: Harold Strak & Willem van Zoetendaal: Amsterdam Stuff 2019: Helga Paris, Céline van Balen, Esther Kroon & Julie Greve: Futures Past & Present 2019: Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity 2019: Elspeth Diederix: When Red Disappears 2019: Deana Lawson 2020: Jean-Luc Mylayne: The Autumn of Paradise 2020: Farah Al Qasimi, Frida Orupabo, Coco Capitán, Myriam Boulos: Infinite Identities 2021: Vincent Delbrouck: Champú 2021: Sohrab Hura: Spill 2021: Luc Delahaye: Le Village 2021: Charlotte Dumas: Ao 2022: Lindokuhle Sobekwa: Umkhondo. Tracing memory 2022: Dana Lixenberg: Polaroid 54/59/79 2022: Sabelo Mlangeni: Isivumelwano 2022: Jochen Lempert: Natural sources 2022: Nhu Xuan Hua: Hug of a swan 2023: Pérez Siquier: Colours and Contrasts of Spain 2023: Variétés. Photography and the Avant-garde: Man Ray, Berenice Abbott, Germaine Krull, Florence Henri and others 2023: Widline Cadet: Take This with You / Pran sa avèk ou 2023: Tarrah Krajnak: Shadowings. A Catalogue of Attitudes for Estranged Daughters 2024: Lisa Oppenheim: Spolia 2024: Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage 2024: Jeff Cowen: Provence Works 2024: Awoiska van der Molen: The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves 2025: Revoir Paris: Paris through the lens of the Séeberger brothers (1900–1907) 2025: Memento: Photography, interrupted 2025: Kusukazu Uraguchi: Shima no Ama 2025: Michella Bredahl: Rooms We Made Safe 2026: Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940–1997) 2026: Yumna Al-Arashi: Body as Resistance 2026: Martine Gutierrez: Wunderkind
References