The world’s first open-access art museum storage facility welcomes visitors.

This weekend, Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen will open to the public, allowing guests to peruse the museum’s collection of 151,000 pieces and observe portions of it undergoing conservation.

The Depot, in Rotterdam’s Museumpark, is situated close to the under-renovation Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. It holds these artifacts in fourteen storage compartments spread across six stories, each with a different climate.

Exciting glimpses of the collection are on show throughout the building, along with all the processes involved in maintaining and caring for a collection.

Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen was intended to be a functioning structure as well as a safe place to store the collection. Here, the research and collection department handles registration, loan traffic, conservation, restoration, and facilitates and carries out research.

According to the museum, it is a first for the globe and the embodiment of the evolving concept of collection management. This level of public access to museum storage coupled with a behind-the-scenes look has never been offered before.

Here, Sandra Kisters, Head of Collections and Research at MuseumNext, discusses the new building, the challenges that led to its construction, and the services it currently provides for collection management and visitor experience.