The board of CODART has appointed Gerdien Verschoor (1963) as the new director of CODART. Gerdien is currently curator at the Museum de Fundatie, a multi-location institute for the vast collection of Dirk Hannema (1895-1984) and other former private collections, housed in the castle Het Nijenhuis near Heino and a new museum building in Zwolle, which will be opened this summer. De Fundatie also organizes contemporary art exhibitions in the Bergkerk in Deventer.

Henk van der Walle, director of the board of CODART, said: "We are very happy to have Gerdien as the new director. She will bring with her a wealth of experience and contacts from her work as Embassy attaché and curator. Her inspiring and energetic personality and her clear vision for the future course of CODART will mean a lot to the organization."

Gerdien will succeed Gary Schwartz, the founding director of CODART, who will step down from this position as of July 2005, but will stay on part time as webmaster. Gary Schwartz said: "Passing the directorship of CODART on to Gerdien gives me a feeling of great confidence in the future of the organization. I have no doubt that she will receive the same support from the membership I have always enjoyed and will provide the quality of leadership the organization requires. I would like to congratulate her with a function that has always given me the greatest satisfaction."

Gerdien studied art history at Leiden University. In 1987 she lived in Kraków for a year to work on a master’s thesis on modern Polish painters. Two years later she returned to Poland with a scholarship from the Polish government. In Warsaw she began work on a Ph.D. dissertation concerning Polish artists in Paris in the interbellum period. She worked one year in the Department of Modern Art of the Art Museum in Lódz. In 1992, she joined the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Warsaw, where she worked for eight years as press officer and cultural attaché. In 1998 she got her degree at the Polish Academy of Sciences with The Kapists 1924-1939: visions on painterly order. Since her return to the Netherlands in 2001 Gerdien has worked as a curator in Heino. She is involved in the Poland section of an international museum co-operation program of the Dutch Museums Association and is currently preparing a similar program in Ukraine.

Gerdien is not new to CODART. Knowing all the destinations and curators we were going to visit last year on the study trip to Poland, she helped to organize the trip, in which she participated as travelling consultant. With her knowledge of Polish history, culture and daily life as well as her mastery of the language she was able to enrich the program in many ways. Gerdien is glad to accept the directorship of CODART because "it brings together various threads in my career to date. Since many years, I feel the powerful appeal of the combination of art-historical content, museum practice and the international context. My experience has taught me how important it is to have access to networks and how inspiring it can be for a museum curator to be stimulated to participate in international activities. I look forward to the cooperation in this field with the members and team of CODART."

Gerdien will start working as of 1 July 2005. She can be reached at:
CODART
P.O. Box 76709
NL-1070 KA Amsterdam
The Netherlands
T +31 20 305 4521
F +31 20 305 4500
gerdien@codart.nl