Ali Mousavi

In Amsterdam, which claims to have the greatest number of museums per square mile in the world, few topics are left unexplored. There is a museum that delves into sex, another on war (or at least the Dutch resistance), and a museum dedicated, of course, to marijuana. Last fall, a museum opened with a focus on another topic that rarefied institutions generally avoid: tattoos.

Founded by the Dutch tattoo artist Henk Schiffmacher, the Amsterdam Tattoo Museum is dedicated to the art, history and preservation of tattoo culture. Occupying 21,000 square feet of two beautifully restored 19th-century buildings, the collection is a wide-ranging one that documents the history of tattooing, from the prehistoric era to the present day.



Mr. Schiffmacher’s personal artifacts are the backbone of the collection; he donated tattoo machines, artwork and ephemera like the skin from the arm of a Boston whaler, preserved in formaldahyde, which was not buried in the hopes that its tattoos would help identify him. (They didn’t.) But the museum is no mere curio shop. Items from other donors include prints by the Japanese tattoo master Horiyoshi III and tools from the legendary Samoan tattoo family Suluape. The museum also houses a library, publishing house, cafe, bookstore and a memorial garden.

“There’s really nothing else quite like it. Nothing that covers such a broad range of tattooing history, from the tribal world through contemporary tattooing,” said Dr. Lars Krutak, an anthropologist from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who delivered the museum’s inaugural lecture. “I see it as an incredible place to learn about the meaning of tattooing from all angles, from all time periods.”

Mr. Schiffmacher, 59, first thought of creating a museum after spending more than 30 years amassing tattoo-related memorabilia, a hobby he started while working in advertising. “Like most, I would go to the red light district during my lunch break, except I would go to see the tattoo artists and photograph people getting tattoos, ” he said. He then set out on expeditions to study tattoos all over the world. When his personal collection held over 60,000 items, Mr. Schiffmacher approached Dutch museums but they expressed interest in only certain parts of the collection. So he decided to create his own.

The outcome is a proper 21st-century museum that has attracted 8,000 visitors in the two months since its opening in early November. Areas are dedicated to the art of tattooing in various cultures. The ground level uses interactive exhibitions to explore tattooing in ancient Africa, Polynesia and Samoa, and upstairs is devoted to European and Western tattoo culture.

The museum sells souvenirs online but a viewer who travels to see the collection in person can take away a more enduring item. Guest artists, who are featured in the studio throughout the year, also give tattoos. Horishige from Japan, Filip Leu from Switzerland and Tin-Tin from Paris are among the artists who are appearing at the museum this year. For Tin-Tin, the studio provides the opportunity to work alongside some of the world’s best artists and “contribute my little brick to the construction of the tattoo community,” he said.