A few years ago, there was much excitement about Straat Museum, a huge, new, innovative showcase for street art planned for Amsterdam (see the Art Junkie post about it here.) Red tape, building concerns and the pandemic set completion back but it’s up and running now and it’s exceeding all expectations.

Reviews of the museum say the exhibitions are superb. The latest is a solo show Take me Down by Mando Marie, known for meticulous devotion to hand-drawn and hand-cut stencils, below.

Housed in an imposing national monument – the 8,000 square metre Lasloods building of the NDSM wharf in Amsterdam North – STRAAT Museum’s permanent collection consists of more than 160 artworks by more than 130 international, street art and graffiti artists.

Canadian artist Michelle Hoogveld is represented there, with a work called Resonance and Canadian-born Chris Dyer painted the imaginary creature (below) in Shamanic journey, which he visualized after taking the entheogenic drink ayahuasca in Peru.

The canvases are all the size of exterior walls. The artists use the same techniques and materials as outside, including scaffolding and elevators.

Browse the Straat Museum site for more.