The only place on our list of places to see – which, admittedly, means it’s not a list at all and is merely a name – was the Straat Street Art Museum. Only, the Dutch do like to capitalise words a lot so it was actually the STRAAT Street Art Museum. We’d taken the ferry across the IJ (capitals) to the NDSM area (more capitals) after our cruise ship arrival in Amsterdam and were busy pondering whether this was all some plot by the people of the Netherlands to remove lower case letters altogether and the possibility that some shadowy group of former Dragon 32 computer owners had infiltrated all levels of Amsterdam’s ruling council when we got distracted by all the wonderful artwork.
This post will lack many words – you can stop cheering now – because whilst we walked around to admire the artwork and read about the pieces, I didn’t actually take any photos of the information panels about the street art so don’t really know who the artists were in each case or what the pieces were called. I could probably find out a few if I tried, but if you cared enough to know then you could probably find that out yourself.
STRAAT opened in 2020 in a former welding warehouse that had transitioned to an indoor market with decorative pieces before exclusively serving as a museum to the artwork. It was huge, and it was fabulous. You could spend a long time there, and we did.
There were some less conventional pieces of street art, including some 3D works.
After completing our winding walk around all the pieces at ground level I made my way up a set of steps to a viewing platform set high in the warehouse. From here you could really get a feel for the space and how it had been filled with the colourful art.
As we left it was nice to see that the exterior walls of STRAAT were designated as canvasses for locals and more amateur street artists to produce their art. The quality couldn’t match what was inside, of course, but everyone’s got to start somewhere.
STRAAT was wonderful and it gets our coveted nod of approval which is our way of saying you should visit without actually going so far as to recommend things. You don’t know us. We don’t know you. It’s also just a short and free ferry ride away from Centraal station in Amsterdam and makes for a nice, modern activity that contrasts well with all the historical elements you might find in the more tourist-heavy areas of the Dutch capital.
In the next post in this Celebrity Silhouette cruise travelogue series we’ll stay on the Amsterdam-Noord side of the IJ and head towards a brewery while we keep one eye on the rain clouds.