The main part of the museum opened in 1973 following designs by Gerrit Rietveld. The architect of the Exhibition Wing, completed in 1999, was Kisho Kurokawa. Initially, the museum comprised only the main building set on the Paulus Potterstraat, which housed the permanent collection and temporary exhibits. Today, this 1973 site is used solely for the permanent collection. Rietveld, a leading member of De Stijl group, a movement which saw its heyday in the 1920s, worked in line with the Modernists’ approach. Rietveld fancied geometrical forms and vast open spaces. The structure’s notable feature is the staircase in the central hall, with the daylight entering through a high atrium, flooding the museum galleries.

The Exhibition Wing, designed by Japanese Kisho Kurokawa, an artist known for his work on the Kuala Lumpur airport, is characterised by geometrical forms; mostly cones, ellipses and squares, and a peculiar blend of eastern and western architectural principles. The new wing of the Van Gogh Museum was determined by a sober design, set in perfect accord with the existing building. Rational geometry is symbiotically intertwined with eastern asymmetry. The addition of the new wing was triggered by a bequest from The Japan Foundation, with funds for the donation from the Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company of Tokyo. In 1998-99, the building was renovated by Greiner Van Goor Huijten Architects BV, with the addition of a new office wing.

During his 10-year career as a painter, Van Gogh was highly prolific, producing a total of 864 paintings, as well as some 1,200 drawings and prints. The largest ensemble of his work, featuring over 200 paintings, 437 drawings and 31 prints, is to be found in the Van Gogh Museum, while some additional drawings and paintings are housed at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The remaining portion of his work is dispersed among a number of world museums and private collections, mostly in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Japan and the U.S. Apart from presenting its Van Gogh collection, with a complete catalogue of the artist’s entire oeuvre, the museum showcases Vincent van Gogh’s passionate letter writing. Van Gogh had put his thoughts to paper in over 800 letters, some of which were addressed to fellow artists, such as Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin. But the major portion of this vast heritage is to his brother Theo, Vincent’s greatest supporter. The majority of the manuscripts are in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, forming an indispensable source of information about the painter’s life and work.

The Van Gogh Museum has also been related to some lucrative art theft stories. On December 7, 2002, two paintings of Van Gogh vanished from the Van Gogh Museum, namely 'Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen' and 'View of the Sea at Scheveningen'. One year later the police arrested Octave Durham in Spanish Puerto Banus, while Henk Bieslijn, the other suspect, was arrested in 2003 in Amsterdam. On April 8, 2005, Durham received a four-and-half-year prison sentence, while Biesljn was sentenced to four years. Both were imposed a 350,000 euro fine, but until now the paintings have not been found. Under Dutch law, the thieves will be able to request ownership of the paintings after 20-30 years.