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Foto: Wouter van der Wolk (UvA)
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This is also the UvA: Centuries-old art on the Oude Turfmarkt

Dirk Wolthekker,
28 september 2022 - 09:58

The UvA has teaching buildings and laboratories, of course, but there are many other buildings, too. This week we zoom in on the Allard Pierson. It houses the UvA's extraordinary, rare and archaeological heritage collections.

You could say that the Allard Pierson (AP)  itself is also a piece of heritage, as it is located on the historic Old Turfmarkt in a rather handsome 1865 building with a neoclassical sandstone façade and a view of the Rokin waterfront. Not surprisingly, the Allard Pierson is named after Allard Pierson, but who was he?

Allard Pierson was born nearly 200 years ago - in 1831 to be exact - the scion of a wealthy Amsterdam banking family. He studied theology and, like his brother Hendrik, who was three years younger, became a pastor. He preached first in Leuven and then in Rotterdam before losing his faith and continuing to live as an agnostic.

 

The first professor

After a brief academic interlude in Heidelberg, he returned to his native Amsterdam where the city university was eagerly seeking professors. The university would receive the authority to bestow PhDs from 1877 and thus achieve true scientific status. But what good is scientific status without quality professors?

So that same year, Allard Pierson became the first professor of art history, aesthetics and modern languages and literature at the UvA. He was a man with a keen interest in classical archaeology and the Renaissance and traveled to Italy several times. To enliven his teaching at the UvA, he had plaster casts of sculptures from classical antiquity made to use as teaching materials during his lectures on archaeology, a field of study that was part of his teaching mission.

 

Sarphatistraat

But this did not yet constitute a full-fledged scientific research collection. This only began after Allard's death. In 1896, his son established the Allard Pierson Foundation. Its considerable fortune was used to promote science, especially antiquities, which eventually made it possible to establish a museum in 1934 that took Allard's name. The 6,000 objects served academic education in archaeology. The venue at the time was an old school building on the corner of Sarphatistraat and Roetersstraat.

Through donations, loans and purchases, the collection grew so large over the years that a move was necessary. At that time, the vacant premises of De Nederlandsche Bank came into view, which was scheduled to move to Frederiksplein. Moving vans were ordered and the collections traveled to the Oude Turfmarkt in 1976, where they remain to this day and are now largely on display: tens of thousands of objects, mostly from ancient civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt, the Ancient Near East, ancient Greek pottery, the Etruscans, and the Roman Empire.

 

From the Nile to the Amstel

Under the responsibility of the now departed AP director Wim Hupperetz, the archaeological collections were merged with the UvA's special collections in 2019. Since then, important collections in theater and book history, graphic design and typography, cartography and cultural history have also belonged to what is now called "Allard Pierson." A year later, the newly built wing was also opened.

 

Everything on display there is part of the permanent exhibition "From the Nile to the Amstel," which runs throughout the building and includes the plaster gallery and the Egypt cabinet. Many exhibits also have a digital counterpart, consisting of a small screen displaying the object as a 3D model with an explanation in Dutch or English. It allows you to tinker with the object: you can turn it over, move it to the back, give it a color, etc. How modern antiques can be!

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