The collection of Jac Hoogerbrugge | Provenance and vision

Within the world of tribal art, private collections often occupy a key role. They reflect not only personal preference, but also a way of looking, researching and appreciating. Jac Hoogerbrugge's collection is among those rare collections built from direct experience, long-term fieldwork and deep knowledge of cultural context.

Hoogerbrugge collected not to own, but to understand. Together, his objects form a substantively coherent whole, in which ritual function, formal power and provenance are inseparable.

Field experience in Indonesia and New Guinea

Jac Hoogerbrugge worked for international organisations in Indonesia and New Guinea in the years after World War II, among other places. This period gave him the opportunity to have long-term contact with local communities and their material culture.

He developed a special interest in art and ritual objects from, among others:

North Sumatra (Batak areas)
the Sentani area and Humboldt Bay
Papua, with a strong focus on Asmat art
Borneo (Dayak cultures)

This early field experience fundamentally distinguishes his collecting from that of many contemporaries.

Collecting as research

Hoogerbrugge combined collecting with documentation. He made drawings, studied rituals and mythologies, and made connections between form, function and meaning. Objects were never separated from their cultural context.

Even after his return to the Netherlands, he continued to actively collect, including through auctions, private networks and contacts with missionaries and former colonial families. In doing so, his approach remained consistent: only objects with clear provenance and intrinsic value were considered.

The Asmat Art Project

An important chapter in Hoogerbrugge's work is his involvement in the Asmat Art Project (1969-1972), an initiative supported by the United Nations. This project aimed to document and promote traditional Asmat woodcarving in a period of rapid social change.

The resulting knowledge and documentation have had a lasting impact on the study and appreciation of Asmat art within museum and academic circles.

Sculptural strength and patina

What characterises many objects in the Hoogerbrugge collection is their distinct sculptural quality. Traces of use, age and ritual handling are visible and not concealed. Patina here acts as a carrier of history and meaning, not imperfection.

For collectors, this very combination of formal strength and lived history is an essential quality criterion.

Drawings as a form of documentation

Besides collecting and documenting objects, Jac Hoogerbrugge also sketchy drawings of the pieces that particularly interested him. These drawings served not as artistic elaboration, but as an analytical tool: a way to capture shapes, proportions and characteristic details.

The drawings emphasise posture, rhythm and sculptural construction. Superfluous details are omitted, while essential elements are enhanced. This creates a clear picture of what Hoogerbrugge considered the core of an object.

The combination of sketches and notes shows how closely his collecting practice was linked to observation and study. These drawings thus provide a rare glimpse into the thought process of a collector who not only owned objects but actively tried to fathom them.

The Hoogerbrugge collection at Vergulde Kat

Within Vergulde Kat's collection are several objects originating from Jac Hoogerbrugge's collection. Together, they provide a representative picture of his collecting vision and his long-term involvement with the art and cultures of Indonesia and Papua.