Creative Chance

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s Surrealism collection is world famous, but this Boijmans Study is not devoted to the oeuvres of great names in the canon like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. Instead, it tells the story of the idiosyncratic finds made by the Dutch collectors Laurens Vancrevel and his wife Frida de Jong. Long before museums started to take notice, the couple had collected art and poetry by then relatively unknown Surrealists. Over the years, they let themselves be guided by chance, friendships and random encounters, and this has resulted in a unique collection of Surrealist art from which the museum has been allowed to make a selection. The study examines the 50 artworks that have been gifted and reflects on two approaches to collecting: the creation of a private collection and the way Surrealism was acquired by Dutch museums like Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.