At the end of 2003 the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum closed its main building, to renovate it and turn it - in the words of its Director Ronald de Leeuw - into ‘the most beautiful art museum imaginable’. Spanish architects Cruz and Ortiz conceived a grand design which was to open in 2009: a modernized building embodying a groundbreaking museological concept. Film maker Hoogendijk followed the first four years of what is the Netherlands’ biggest and most ambitious cultural operation. Metal claws crush walls of the internationally renowned treasure-trove of Dutch art. A new museum was to rise from the ashes of the old museum. But from the very start the project was plagued by opposition from the local authority, the Dutch Cycling Union and building inspectors, to name but a few. All the drilling and dismantling should eventually give rise to something beautiful, but demolition turns out to be easier than building. The restoration job continually gets delayed, and the tortuously slow decision-making process has led to the departure of both project manager and the chief curator. Again and again the architects’ designs bit the dust, and they were forced to compromise at every turn. As Spanish architect Antonio Ortiz put it: ‘This is not democracy, this is a perversion of democracy’. The years wear on, and the frustrations mount. The ingenious use of stylistic feature film elements, perfect camera work and subtle editing techniques make The New Rijksmuseum a compelling visual opera of great beauty.