Amsterdam Highlight: STRAAT Museum

The STRAAT Museum and NDSM LOODS were a great place to spend our last day in Amsterdam!

For our last day in Amsterdam, we decided to take the ferry to check out a part of the city where we’d never been. NDSM wharf is a former shipyard that has been taken over by artists, bars, and restaurants, and is where you will find the STRAAT Museum – home to an amazing collection of street art. To get there, you can take a ferry across the river IJ from the Centrall station, so it’s pretty easily accessible. The ferry ride was a pretty view of the city, if a little bit cold and breezy at that time of year.

The STRAAT Museum is a great stop for a day in Amsterdam

The STRAAT Museum is dedicated to showcasing all forms of street art, and houses a ton of work that was created in-house. We spent hours wandering the large warehouse viewing the art. We probably would have spent even more time if our feet weren’t freezing – it’s hard to heat a space that large and so it’s definitely chilly!

The inside of the STRAAT Museum is gigantic, and there is art everywhere you turn.

This was one of the first pieces to greet us as we entered STRAAT, and I loved the color and fractal forms of it.

The hanging truck in the middle of the museum was a curious piece.

STRAAT has work by well-known artists from all over the world, plus less famous ones. It houses more typical murals, but also tiny installations that were hidden around the space next to the larger pieces. It was fun to spot these smaller images peeking out from the walls. In addition, there were a number of sculptures that we also enjoyed.

This figure was hidden away almost behind a mural.

Donkey Kong was hiding high up above a mural. It reminded us of the art we saw on walls in Paris.

These tiny figures on balconies were perched high above the floor. Maybe an ode to the loneliness of corporate life?

This figure was created on top of an actual rug.

I found this stark image to be a very powerful statement.

The museum makes a point of trying to be an accessible space for a diversity of artists, and I particularly enjoyed the pieces by female artists. They were sometimes playful and sometimes powerful, and I soaked up the atmosphere they created.

I loved this playful piece by an indigenous artist.

This powerful piece was very moving in person.

You may remember this image from the pandemic

This mirrored image of people running was meant to allow the viewer to see themselves in people running for their lives to a safer place.

This was a mural painted to look like a 3D structure. The walls were flat, but they didn’t seem like it. It was uncanny.

This mural near the end was painted by a Colombian artist. I loved the color and the way the figures stuck with me after seeing it.

By the time we finished looking at the art, we were starving. Luckily, there are plenty of restaurant choices in the area, including one in the NDSM LOODS space just next door. This is another big warehouse where artists have taken over and put in workshops and galleries. It would be a great place to explore on another visit, perhaps when it wasn’t so cold.