World’s largest Ford museum to close, may sell entire collection at once

Photos by Bruno Costers.

Two years after shifting its focus to attract younger visitors, the world's largest Ford museum – the Den Hartogh in the Netherlands – has failed to attract a new executive director and has announced that it will close in another month or so.

According to a report on MuseumActueel.nl published earlier this month, the Den Hartogh Ford Museum in Hillegom will close December 1 with the retirement of the museum's current director, Greske Rust. Rust, daughter of museum founder Piet den Hartogh, has not appointed a successor because, according to the report, nobody in the family has shown any interest in succeeding her.

"A unique collection like this is love, attention and enthusiasm needed to be rearranged, to be reconstituted and to reinvent themselves again and again," the family wrote on the museum's website. "And this passion and resources are not available."

Opened to the public in 1997 at the urging of Piet den Hartogh's wife, the Den Hartogh Museum consisted entirely of Piet den Hartogh's collection of Ford Motor Company vehicles filling a 5,000-square-meter facility. Piet den Hartogh, who died in 2011, began assembling the collection during the 1950s and traveled around the world to obtain vehicles for the collection. The Guinness Book of World Records certified the museum as the world's largest Ford museum with 200-plus vehicles.

Declining attendance, however, figured into museum officials' decision to auction off 47 of those vehicles in 2014. At the time, museum officials said the auction was intended to clear out some of the collection's pre-war Fords so the museum could add more post-war vehicles to "make the museum a bit younger." After the sale, reports indicate that the museum has still had a tough time attracting visitors. A review of photos taken of the museum collection earlier this month indicates that few, if any, post-war vehicles were added to the collection.

With nobody in the family left to tend to the collection, the family has indicated that they will sell off the museum's contents, likely as a whole rather than piecemeal. No concrete plans have been announced for such a sale.

Museum officials have announced that the museum's last scheduled event, a model and automobilia fair combined with a cars and coffee-style gathering, will function as the museum's send off. That event will take place November 6.

For more information about the museum, visit FordMuseum.nl.

from Hemmings Daily – News for the collector car enthusiast http://ift.tt/2e0cQww