This major European art museum is getting a huge new sculpture garden – here’s a first look

It’s been an exciting few weeks for Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. In December, the art museum announced plans to build an outpost in the south of the Netherlands, and now it has revealed that it will be expanding within Amsterdam too.

This time, however, it’s taking art beyond the gallery walls by creating a publicly accessible sculpture garden ‘just a stone’s throw away’ from the museum. The space will be created by merging three already existing gardens, and will become home to a range of large-scale works from international artists, alongside a diverse range of plant life.

Each of the gardens set to become a part of the new park has an old-school pavilion building attached, and as part of the project these will be turned into indoor exhibition spaces by the British architecture firm Foster + Partners. The company is responsible for some of London’s most famous buildings, including Wembley Stadium, the Gherkin, and the Millennium Bridge, and has made its mark on more than 50 different countries, so you can trust that you won’t be let down by whatever it does with these mini galleries.

The outside elements – from landscaping to seating – will be designed by Piet Blanckaert, a Belgian architect who specialises in creating spectacular gardens. Aside from the artworks, you’ll find hundreds of trees and plants, as there is a focus on bringing greater biodiversity to the city centre.

In terms of which sculptures will find a home in the new garden, the Rijksmuseum’s general director explained that there will be a focus on more modern pieces, saying: ‘[this] will give modern sculpture the visibility it deserves. It also marks an unprecedented enhancement of the Rijksmuseum’s collection of 20th-century art.’

So far, Alberto Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Jean Arp, Roni Horn and Henry Moore have been named as just some of the artists whose work will be displayed in the new space. There will also be temporary exhibits in rotation.

Much of the funding for the garden is being donated by the Don Quixote Foundation, which has pledged €60 million to the project. At the momen,  there’s no indication of when work might start, but it is hoped that the garden will be open by autumn 2026. In the meantime, here are 25 other great things to do in ‘Dam.

A stunning new contemporary art gallery has just opened in this Asian capital.

Plus: A huge collection of rarely seen Matisse paintings has been donated to this European museum.