The Special Collections Department of Leiden University Libraries has announced the appointment of Tom van der Molen (Member of CODART since 2014) as curator of prints and drawings, effective 1 January 2027. He succeeds Jef Schaeps (Member of CODART Alumni since 2026), who held this position for over 35 years until his retirement at the end of August 2026.

Tom studied art history at the University of Amsterdam and specializes in seventeenth-century art and culture. In 2025, he earned his Ph.D. from Radboud University in Nijmegen with a dissertation on the work of the Amsterdam artist Govert Flinck (1615–1660), in which he explored, among other things, the interplay between painting and literature in the seventeenth century.

Since 2013, Tom has worked as a curator at the Amsterdam Museum, where his responsibilities included overseeing the drawings and prints from the Fodor Collection. For the museum he initiated various seminars of ‘object-based research’ and contributed to a wide range of exhibitions, such as: Group Portraits of the Seventeenth Century (2014-2021), Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck: Rembrandt’s Master Pupils (2017-18), Panorama Amsterdam (2022-2025), Piet van Eeghen’s Amsterdam (2024), and Manahahtáanung or New Amsterdam? The Indigenous Story Behind New York (2024).

Tom is looking forward to his new challenge: “I’m incredibly excited to get to know the fantastic collection of prints and drawings at Leiden University in all its breadth and to work closely with researchers and students who want to make use of the collection.”