In recent years there has been growing discontent, among the directors of the world’s major museums, with the limited amount of exhibition space available in the buildings which they have inherited. Many of those buildings were originally constructed in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries and have long since been outgrown by the collections which they were once comfortably able to house. Collective dissatisfaction with this state of affairs has fuelled an unprecedented surge in new museum-building.

The National Gallery has its Sainsbury Wing, whereas the Tate under Nicholas Serota has metamorphosed from maiden aunt on Millbank into a hydra-headed marvel, not only annexing an entire power station opposite St Paul’s for its collections of international modern art but also establishing outposts in Liverpool and St Ives. The trend has been equally conspicuous abroad. MOMA in New York is currently extending its existing premises and has also opened a new branch across the Hudson in Queen’s, while the Guggenheim has its own extraordinary new building designed by Frank Gehry in Bilbao. One of the most unusual and exotic fruits of this age of museum expansionism is the new Rijksmuseum Schiphol – a gleaming glass and metal box suspended above one of the main concourses of Amsterdam airport, where an exhibition devoted to the art of the seventeenth-century Dutch master Jan Steen opened in the middle of last week.

The Rijksmuseum Schiphol is to be found on what the Amsterdam airport authorities have patriotically christened “Holland Boulevard”, which is a long, light-filled corridor, complete with moving walkways, running between Lounge Two and Lounge Three. An arterial route connecting European and Intercontinental Departures, this is a place where people awaiting transfers, or whose flights have been delayed, congregate to while away the time with a little light shopping, a meal, a drink,...

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