Streetart: STRAAT in Amsterdam Part 2

We are back at STRAAT Mueseum for the second gallery - there is just so much stuff here that I couldn't fit it into one post. Also for those playing at home you should understand that a trip to NDSM (which is about a 10 minute free farry ride from Amsterdam Centraal station) is designed as a day-trip destination, you will need at least 3-4 hours, with at least an hour at STRAAT itself.

A quick recap - STRAAT Museum is Amsterdam’s street-art-and-graffiti powerhouse, opened in October 2020 in an 8,000 m² NDSM shipyard warehouse and showcasing 180+ works by 170+ artists that rotate regularly. Its purpose is to elevate graffiti and street art from the margins to the museum while keeping the raw, rule-free energy of the streets.

Here are some other things I forgot to tell you last time:

It’s built like a living archive, not a static show. The full collection is much larger than the 180 on view; works are swapped in and out and new pieces are constantly commissioned, so maybe I should convince myself that I could go back again (although for me it's a 10 minute ferry ride and a 23 hour flight from my hometown of Melbourne Australia so it might be a stretch)

There’s a dedicated mezzanine which is where I was standing for the top shot in this post is for temporary shows (there wasn't anything when I was there) . Alongside the permanent collection, STRAAT runs rotating exhibitions in a mezzanine gallery focused on emerging talent and thematic projects, giving the program a “main stage + lab” structure.

The building itself is part of the story. The NDSM wharf was a shipbuilding hub; STRAAT repurposes that industrial shell, tying the museum’s identity to Amsterdam’s broader transformation of post-industrial zones into cultural districts. This area was one pf my favourites, with the old yellow cranes and then the sculpture of the boy on the swing, the scale here is hard to get across.

and a specical shout out to this piece - which was 3D, walk in front of the glass in front of it and the lady transforms to a wolf, or maybe the wolf transforms into the lady - very cool

So there it is - across the two posts I hope you have a sense of STRAAT - it is a very cool, very fun gallery in a cool area, and so different from what most tourists would experience in Amsterdam.