Jopie Huisman Museum

The Jopie Huisman Museum is Workum's best reason to stop. Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) was a Frisian scrap dealer and self-taught painter who became one of the most popular Dutch artists of the 20th century — not in the art world exactly, but with ordinary people who recognised something in his hyperrealistic depictions of worn objects, working-class Frisian life, and the landscape around Workum. He became nationally known through Dutch television in the 1980s and 1990s.

The permanent exhibition, called "Jopie's Cathedral," is organised around three themes: sustainability, nature, and compassion. The work ranges from careful still lifes of discarded objects to Frisian landscapes and portraits. The museum is in Noard 6, near the Sint-Gertrudiskerk, and is well set up with audio tours in Dutch, English, and German. There is a café and a good shop.

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A story
Jopie Huisman was the first living artist in the Netherlands to have a museum built specifically for his work. He was a scrap dealer who taught himself to paint, and many of his subjects were things other people threw away — worn-out shoes, bent cutlery, frayed rope — rendered with a precision that makes the viewer look again at what they considered worthless. "What is discarded as old rubbish turns into something that can move," he said.