Dutch art's high cathedral re-opens after a decade

Every major museum around the globe has spent the last decade refurbishing its galleries. Not the hallowed Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, home of the greatest masterpieces of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals and other figures of Holland's “Golden Age”. It simply shut down for 10 years for total renovation. And it did so not to produce a spanking new museum of white walls and modern space but to restore the original Victorian-era brick palace that opened in 1885, the Independent reported.

It is a secular cathedral. The vast stained glass windows and the restored wall paintings envisage art as the spiritual height of human endeavour breathing inspiration into human activity in all its forms.

The high altar is placed before Rembrandt's magnificent and monumental Night Watch, its band of would-be martial heroes spilling out on the street in a cacophony of noise and self-display, its full size shaved down to get it into Amsterdam's civic hall a century later. It was the centrepiece of the original building and still is now, at the end of what is called a “Gallery of Honour”.

For a generation the museum world in general has moved away from seeing its function as portraying the objects of “high art” towards using objects as a means of understanding the broader cultures and societies of the past. The mundane is put together with the richest. Children and visitors are encouraged to interact through screens and written information, graphics and even sound.

The Rijksmuseum has eschewed it all with its defiantly minimalist and aesthetic approach. Although it adds furniture, silverware and china in some rooms, those are luxury items of the highest quality, works of art in their own right. Explanations are kept to the minimum, on the basis that in today's world anyone who does need more can get it on their mobile telephone or tablet. There's no attempt at interaction within the galleries, although there is a new education centre in a neighbouring building.

Some 5,000 of the 8,000 works on display have been cleaned and restored. The works are all lit from above, from specially designed chandeliers. The showcases are made of non-reflective glass glued without frames. The background colour is a muted grey so as not to compete with the art. The acres of white that dominate most other museums, and which was used to paint over the original colours before the renovation, have gone.

British museums would be immeasurably improved if every director went to Amsterdam to learn what can be done with modern materials and lighting technology. The effect of the galleries on the collections of delftware, jewellery, silverware and cabinetwork is a case in point. They make even the arms and armaments things of beauty. What the museum has done, with the help of Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the Parisian in charge of interior design, and the Spanish architects Cruz y Ortiz, is to bring back the idea of a museum as a temple to beauty.