Allar Pierreson Museum of Art

About

The Allard Pierson museum takes its name from Allard Pierson (1831–1896), a 19th-century figure who began as a theologian and went on to become a university professor. After studying theology, he served as a pastor in Leuven, Belgium, and Rotterdam, but left the church over his modernist views on faith; he later held a theology professorship at Heidelberg in 1870, and in 1877, when the University of Amsterdam was formally established, was appointed professor of art history, aesthetics, and modern languages. In 1932, his son Jan Lodewijk Pierson established a foundation that opened the antiquities collection for research and education. The museum's current building originally served as the head office of De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank, constructed between 1865 and 1869 to designs by architect W.A. Froger; the rails once used by carts transporting money still run from the dock to the entrance hall. After the bank relocated to Frederiksplein, the University of Amsterdam took over the building in 1968, and artist Dick Elffers designed its conversion into a museum, which opened on October 6, 1976.