Van Gogh Museum. Photo: Michiel van Nieuwkerk.

Yesterday the Van Gogh Museum welcomed its millionth visitor this year, a proud milestone for the museum on the eve of its temporary move to the Hermitage Amsterdam. In 2011, the millionth visitor arrived one week earlier. In comparison with recent years, visitor numbers for 2012 are right on schedule.

‘Relative to last year, we are seeing a slight shift in the composition of our visiting public,’ says Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh Museum. ‘Among all the art lovers visiting the museum, 88% come from abroad and 11% from the Netherlands.’ These are the figures as of the end of July. Over the past five years, the proportion of Dutch visitors to the museum has varied between 9 and 13 percent.

A growing share of visitors are tourists from Australia, Great Britain, Russia, Brazil, South Korea and China. Notably, an increasing variety of Eastern European nationalities is represented.

Social media

The museum’s online network is rapidly expanding through the social media. The Van Gogh Museum has more than 47,000 fans on Facebook. More than 38,000 people follow the museum on Twitter, and 180,000 Van Gogh Museum admirers do the same on Google+.

Vincent: The Van Gogh Museum in the Hermitage Amsterdam

The Van Gogh Museum is gearing up for essential renovation work, during which the building on Museumplein will close to the public for seven months, from 24 September 2012 to 1 May 2013. During this period, much of the museum's collection will be on display in the Hermitage Amsterdam in the presentation Vincent. The Van Gogh Museum in the Hermitage Amsterdam, from 29 September to 25 April. The temporary stay at Amstel 51 is an opportunity for visitors to discover the work of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) in an entirely new way. Masterpieces such as Sunflowers (1889), The bedroom (1888), Almond blossom (1890), The potato eaters (1885) and The yellow house (1888), alongside lesser-known works by Van Gogh, will illustrate his quest as viewed through the lens of the artist’s own personal themes. The presentation will also feature rarely-exhibited letters and objects.

On 1 May 2013, the Museumplein building will reopen with the major survey exhibition Van Gogh at Work, marking the Van Gogh Museum’s 40th anniversary.