Ada Hondius-Crone

A Life Devoted to the Arts and the Women’s Movement

Abstract

Ada Hondius-Crone (1893-1996) was a feminist, collector and the donor of more than two hundred objects to the Rijksmuseum and the Vereniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst (vvak). This article examines her contributions to the women’s movement and her acquisitions in the areas of applied and Asian art during the first half of her life, as well as her donations (and rare exchanges and sales) to the Rijksmuseum and the vvak (chief ly) during the second half of her life. It shows how the public worlds of the (Asian and applied) arts and the women’s movement – which sometimes reinforced and overlapped one another – facilitated Hondius-Crone’s public participation in a ‘construed masculine sphere’, and how her acquisitions and donations contributed to the formation and anchoring of her ‘distinctive identity’ as a modern woman possessing an artistic and varied taste. Hondius-Crone’s collection ultimately became fragmented, distributed among various institutions where – in her own estimation – her objects could be ideally represented. As a result, her identity and existence are likewise represented and commemorated in a fragmented manner. Even so, Ada Hondius-Crone’s donations and sales to the Rijksmuseum and the vvak contributed to the development of two new areas of collecting, to wit: Asian art from the nineteen twenties on, and twentieth-century applied art from 1966-68 onwards.