Acting director Willy Auping wants to open the museum to the public again as soon as possible. But after being used as an emergency hospital for a year, material and manpower are needed to restore the museum.

On 17 September Auping asks Lieutenant Colonel Levenston, who is stationed nearby, for help; a request that is answered almost immediately. Levenston: ‘I simply asked the men – and they went right to work as a voluntary effort. It is interesting to think that it was Canadian troops […] who carried this collection out of the caves and painstakingly transported it to the museum where it could once more be hung for people the world over to see.’ The museum is officially reopened on 6 October 1945.

In July 1945, the museum receives a donation from the parents of the painter Dick Ket, who died in 1940: 9 paintings, including self-portraits, and 20 works on paper. The donation follows the safekeeping of the collection in the bomb shelter and Auping’s help, as of 1944, in finding the works. It soon becomes clear that the museum can keep the 600,000 guilders and the works of art that were purchased with it, although extensive research into the provenance of the works would be carried out in due time. In December 1945 the first work is purchased from a reservation of 5,000 guilders on the National Budget, specially reserved for acquisitions: Beguinage in autumn by Eduard Karsen. With the acquisition of The potato eaters by Van Gogh on 6 April 1946, Auping makes a remarkable addition to the collection.

As of late 1945, the museum has a ‘writing power/talent / writer’ on its staff, Cisca Vroom. She describes her new workplace in a letter to her family: ‘I sit alone in a large room, next to Auping’s. No windows to the outside, (Mrs Kröller was keen on concentrated work) only indirect daylight and artificial light. […] On a sideboard by Berlage’s masterful hand are all kinds of pottery and porcelain, from Greek to Delft, Jade and Silver. […] When I have been working for a few hours, I sometimes take a stroll in the museum. Then I wander through the halls, past Van Gogh, Renoir, anyway, too many to mention’. A relationship blossoms between Vroom and Auping. They marry in September 1946 and honeymoon in Liege and Brussels, where an exhibition with work from the collection is showing.

Auping managed to add a masterpiece to the collection with the acquisition of The Potato Eaters by Van Gogh on 6 April 1946. Shortly thereafter he leaves for a Van Gogh exhibition in Belgium. After returning, Auping requires an operation on his appendix. Initially he seems to be recovering well, but a complication occurs and he dies in January at the age of 36. Hendrik Jeekel, board member of De Hoge Veluwe National Park Foundation and deputy director, writes in the annual report: ‘No effort was ever too great for him to serve the interests of the Museum in the most various of forms and he was always ready to provide information to those who showed interest in the Museum and its works of art’. With Auping’s death, the museum loses a talented and promising curator.