In 1997, the auctioneer Piet van Sabben, based in Hoorn, took the initiative to set up a poster museum. Six years later, in May 2003, the museum opened its doors in a historic building on Grote Oost. This means that the Netherlands now has a museum exclusively dedicated to posters as do Germany, France, Denmark, Poland, Italy and Japan.

In two large and some smaller exhibition rooms, temporary exhibitions are organized annually while the first floor is home to the permanent collection showing the highlights of 100 years of Dutch poster art. 

The museum has organized more than 30 temporary exhibitions since its opening, varying from thematic exhibitions on shipping, aviation, the World Expo and politics to exhibitions on the oeuvre of certain Dutch or international poster artists such as Jules Cheret, Cor van Velsen, Nicolaas Wijnberg, Jan Bons, Reza Abedini and Paulina Matusiak. The collection has been assembled over the years through donations and has grown to include approximately 32,000 posters, the majority of which are post-war posters.

Although no collection of the Dutch Poster Museum Hoorn is shown on this page, the institution played a supporting role in the preparation of the Poster Project.