Stedelijk Museum

Amsterdammers call the modern extension "the bathtub," and once you see it, you can't unsee it. The original 1895 building by Adriaan Willem Weissman is dignified neo-Renaissance brick. The 2012 addition by Benthem Crouwel Architects is a massive white composite structure that does, unmistakably, look like an upended bathtub attached to a 19th-century house. The contrast is deliberate, aggressive, and — depending on who you ask — either brilliant or an act of architectural vandalism.

What's inside is less controversial. The Stedelijk holds one of the world's most important collections of modern and contemporary art and design. Malevich's suprematist works, Mondrian's grids, Kandinsky's abstractions, a wall of Karel Appel's explosive CoBrA paintings, major works by Pollock, De Kooning, Warhol, and a growing collection of contemporary artists including Marlene Dumas and Rineke Dijkstra. The photography and design collections are equally strong and frequently overlooked.

The museum opened in 1895, originally housing a donated collection of art and antiques. It drifted through various identities until the 1920s, when the focus narrowed to modern art. Under the legendary directorship of Willem Sandberg from 1945 to 1963 — a former resistance member who had forged identity documents during the war — the Stedelijk became one of the most important contemporary art institutions in Europe. Sandberg championed experimental art when nobody else would, and his graphic design work for the museum is now collected as art in its own right.

The Stedelijk completes Amsterdam's Museum Square trinity alongside the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum. It's the youngest, the edgiest, and — thanks to that bathtub — the one you'll have the strongest opinion about before you even walk through the door.