Netherlands Photo Museum

The museum collection consists of more than 6.5 million objects - the second-largest museum collection in the Netherlands (after Naturalis). It spans from early glass negatives (the earliest from 1842) and daguerreotypes to current day digital works. This includes both work by international photographers that live and work in the Netherlands, and Dutch photographers who have worked abroad. The specialist areas of the collection are documentary photography and analogue photos from the 20th century. The museum is also noted for managing the complete archives of more than 160 archives of historical and contemporary Dutch photographers. Such archives are more than just collections of completed photographic works. "Many of these archives contain workbooks with try-outs of photo-combinations and visual storytelling, personally selected and created by the corresponding photographer." Particular artists whose archives are curated by the Fotomuseum include Ed van der Elsken, Aart Klein, Chas Gerretsen, and Cas Oorthuys. == History ==

The Netherlands Photo Museum was an amalgamation of several related institutions. In the late 1990s, the Prins Bernhard Fund was given the task of managing the significant endowment of Hein Wertheimer, a wealthy Dutch lawyer and keen photographer. The original advice was to share the funds over several existing institutions. However, the members of the Bernhard Fund decided otherwise: the funds should be dedicated to a new centre that would fuse the and the . The first recommendation was to host this in Amsterdam. However, within three years a proposal had been submitted to the government to host it in Rotterdam (with the additional participation of the (the Dutch workshop for photography conservation)) By 2003, the new museum had opened. == Directors ==

• 2003 - 2018: Ruud Visschedijk • 2018 - 2025: Birgit Donker • 2025–present: Roderick van der Lee (ad-interim) == Visitor Numbers ==

All visitor numbers are drawn from the museum's annual reports ==References==