The RKD ─ Netherlands Institute for Art History and the University of Utrecht (UU) are delighted to announce the appointment, from 1 June 2017, of Chris Stolwijk, general director of the RKD, as Professor of History of Dutch Art in an International Context, 1800-1940 (part-time). This means that Chris will be involved in research as well as teaching and supervising undergraduate and doctoral students at Utrecht University. The Chair also has a bridging function between the University of Utrecht and the RKD.
Knowledge of Dutch art in the ‘long nineteenth century’, and of early twentieth-century modernism, is essential for an understanding of the development of visual and applied art over the last two centuries. Equally, it provides insight into the relationship between visual art and nationalist tendencies and perceptions on the one hand, and on the other the absorption of visual forms and artistic ideas across national and cultural boundaries. The Chair is concerned with this crucial period of Dutch art in an international context.
Chris Stolwijk read political science and art history at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and the University of Utrecht. He was awarded his doctorate from the latter institution in 1997 for research into the position of art and artists in the Netherlands from c. 1850 to 1900. Before his appointment as general director of the RKD on 1 November 2012, he held posts at the University of Utrecht and the Van Gogh Museum. Stolwijk has led a number of large-scale research projects and contributed to numerous international exhibitions, including, in recent years, Van Gogh and the colours of the night (2009-2010), Paul Gauguin: the breakthrough into modernity (2009-2010), Van Gogh & Nature (2015), and still to come, Dutch artists in Paris (2017-2018). In addition, Stolwijk’s responsibilities include being chair of the general management board of the Post Graduate School for Art History (Onderzoekschool Kunstgeschiedenis – OSK) and chair of the Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art (RIHA).
Information from the RKD, 12 June 2017