Groeningemuseum, Flanders, Belgium

5ElaineAndGreg 5:00 PM Aug 25, 2021

Excellent Smaller Art Museum
The Groeninge Museum houses a small but outstanding collection of artwork. If you are visiting Bruges, you will definitely want to visit it. The museum itself is in a cool set of buildings more or less in the center of Bruges. You’ll also want to look at the surrounding buildings and canals, many of which are highly photogenic. It's also a 5-minute walk to the Church of Our Lady (which houses an exquisite statue by Michelangelo). Keep in mind that at one time Bruges was arguably the wealthiest city in Europe and the home of some of the greatest artists of the age. The museum focuses mostly, but not entirely, on works from this period. Perhaps most notably, the museum houses works by Jan van Eyck and Hieronymus Bosch. The best of the van Eyck paintings is one of his wife, reproductions of which you will see all over town and on travel literature. It is a very striking painting in real life. The Bosch piece, as you might expect, contains all of the surreal/judgment day kind of imagery for which he is known. One phenomenon we have seen elsewhere is the ability to enjoy great art much more in smaller, lesser-known museums. You can get closer to the works, spend more time with them, and generally avoid the crowds you will see, say, around the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. That was certainly true here. We were able to walk around and spend as much time as we wanted with the museum's best works. We particularly appreciated that with the Bosch triptych, which has hundreds of fascinating smaller images. By the way, another museum like this (although larger) is the National Gallery in Scotland, which has many great works curiously overlooked by tourists. The museum has an excellent audio tour in English as well as some descriptive material on the paintings themselves. The audio is pretty straightforward and instructive without using jargon. I learned a lot from it. There is also some later work more or less up to the present day. How you feel about that is pretty much dependent on how you view works after 1900 generally. There is a pretty good museum shop in the museum, and a larger one towards the Church of Our Lady. Along the way you may come across some modern sculpture representing the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

5TacomaDawn 5:00 PM Nov 16, 2022

Art Lovers Shouldn't Miss
I have visited lots of art museums in my 40 years of travel and I really enjoyed the Groeninge Museum. The collection is well organized with just enough pieces to enjoy without leaving you feeling too rushed. My husband and I used the audio tour to listen to the stories behind 2-3 pieces in each of the rooms they had (until the modern art, which we just don't enjoy as much anywhere). Fascinating history and excellent examples of leading Flemish painters' works. If you like art, or have studied Art History, you will enjoy a 1-2 hour visit to this museum.