ART IN FLAMES

Brand verwoest Armando Museum (ANP foto)

Email today from a Dutch friend:

The Armando Museum in Amersfoort burned down...
First time I cried when seeing a building burn! Powerless bystanders stood there and cried too.
Armando, my favourite Dutch painter... I love his trees and flags...
---
Many of his monumental works gone now...
Also some neighbouring houses (very beautiful, very posh) went up in flames.
C'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?
Thank God there wasn't any fire when Marc Mulders (royal Jubilee window New Church) exhibited many of his works there!! And the building was so nicely restored (former neo-classicist church)...
Damnit!!

Radio Netherlands -

The monumental building was destroyed by a fire in the centre of Amersfoort yesterday afternoon. It no longer served as a church but housed a museum devoted to the work of contemporary Dutch artist Armando. "Everything lost within two hours" bemoans de Volkskrant, quoting a local councillor as saying "A major museum has been lost to us. This is a very sad day for the town."

As an emotional museum director Gerard de Klein told de Volkskrant, the timing could not have been worse. Disaster struck during an exhibition that featured works by the likes of Albrecht Dürer and Jacob van Ruisdael, insured to the tune of 3 million euros: "It was the crowning achievement of our first ten years ... we had unique works on loan ... and now they're just piles of smouldering embers."

"Armando mourns the work of others" reveals AD, reporting how the artist himself was hurt most by the loss of the works on loan, which he described as "irreplaceable". But when the paper asked him if the disaster reflected one of his favourite themes, the transitory nature of life, he replied philosophically "Yes, I suppose you could see it like that..."