The Luxembourg minister of culture, Sam Tanson, announced the appointment of CODART member Ruud Priem as incoming curator of International collections at the Musée nationale d’histoire et d’art (MNHA – National Museum of History and Art) in the capital of the Grand Duchy. From 1 July 2020 Ruud will be responsible for the MNHA’s scientific disclosure and presentation of European art. Since 2015 he headed the Hospitaalmuseum (Sint-Janshospitaal / Memlingmuseum) in Bruges, where he collaborated with the MNHA in 2019 as curator of a traveling exhibition on Spanish baroque art, currently on view in Luxembourg.

Throughout his career, Ruud Priem has worked as a guest curator, advisor and trustee for museums and other cultural institutions, including the Rembrandt Association (Vereniging Rembrandt), Mondriaan Fund and FARO. He studied art history in The Netherlands and Italy, at the universities of Padova and Utrecht, graduating with honors. He worked for the Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History in Utrecht, the research institute of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and as (guest) curator of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. From 2001-2010 Ruud was responsible for a series of exhibitions on the Rijksmuseum’s collections of Dutch 17th-century art, which traveled to museums worldwide and attracted a total of 1,7 million visitors. Before coming to Bruges, he was director and chief curator at Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. As an exhibition curator, his projects sofar included L’Âge d’Or hollandais: de Rembrandt à Vermeer (Paris, 2009-10), The Hours of Catherine of Cleves: Devotion, Demons and Daily Life in the Fifteenth Century (Nijmegen & New York, 2009-10), Studio myths. Artists and their workshops in 19th-century Dutch painting(Haarlem, Nijmegen & Luxembourg, 2010-11), Bruegel’s Witches (Utrecht & Bruges, 2016-17), William Kentridge. Smoke, Ashes, Fable (Bruges, 2017/18), Emanuel de Witte: meester van het licht (Alkmaar, 2017-18) and De Mena, Murillo, Zurbaràn. Masters of The Spanish Baroque (Bruges & Luxembourg 2019-20).