The Louwman Museum is a museum for historic cars,
coaches, and
motorcycles in
The Hague, Netherlands. It is situated on the Leidsestraatweg near the A44 highway. The museum's former names are "Nationaal Automobiel Museum" and "Louwman Collection".
History
The collection of over two hundred cars has been assembled since 1934 by two generations of the Louwman family. The collection was founded in 1934 with the purchase of a 20-year-old
Dodge by Dodge importer Pieter Louwman, the father of the current owner. In 1969, the collection of Mr. Geerlig Riemer was added. Riemer was also founder of the Institute for Automotive and Management (IVA) in
Driebergen. The building which used to house Riemer's collection has since been used as a practical center for the IVA.
The current owner of the collection is Evert Louwman, the Dutch importer of
Lexus,
Toyota, and
Suzuki. In 1969 the collection was moved to
Leidschendam to the newly opened National Automobile Museum. In 1981 the museum was moved to a new location on the property of importer Louwman & Parqui in
Raamsdonksveer. On 18 April 2003 the name "Louwman Collection" was adopted.
On 3 July 2010 the current museum in The Hague, named Louwman Museum, was opened by
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, whose former home
Huis ten Bosch neighbors the museum.
Building
The Louwman Museum is housed in a building with three floors and over 10,000 m² of exhibition space, on The Hague's Leidsestraatweg. It was specifically designed as a museum by
Driehaus Prize winner
Michael Graves, a
New Classical American architect. Landscape architect Louis Baljon designed the layout of the park surrounding the building. The hall when entering the museum is modern, focusing more on architecture than on the cars.
Evert Louwman is the brother of Jan Louwman, owner of the former Wassenaar Zoo, which closed in 1985. The zoo used to have a gate with two brick pillars on which two lions stood. This old gate became the entrance to the new museum.
Collection
The collection is internationally oriented and consists of over 250 automobiles. The museum has the largest collection of cars in the world from 1910 or older.[1] The museum displays a large collection of the current remaining 15 classic cars of the Dutch brand
Spyker and the only remaining
Eysink (a car-brand from Amersfoort). In the former museum of Raamsdonksveer these Dutch cars used to be displayed at the so-called "Trompenburg Square" with original fence of the original Spyker-factory, dismantled in 1993.
The former collection of old cars of the Dutch
Autotron [
nl] in
Rosmalen had been on display since 2005 in Raamsdonksveer, and was moved to the new museum in The Hague. The Autotron has not had an automotive museum since its reorganisation in 2007.