November 18 2021 - 10:00 AM
The Rijksmuseum has appointed Niels van Maanen as its Curator of 20th- And 21st-Century Prints and Drawings. He succeeds Alied Ottevanger who retired last month. Niels van Maanen previously curated several displays at the Rijksmuseum including the current one devoted to Robert Mapplethorpe.
Taco Dibbits: We are delighted with the appointment of Niels van Maanen, a talented art historian with extensive knowledge in the area of diversity in the arts.
Niels van Maanen: I regard it as a huge honour, as well as a great responsibility, to have the opportunity to continue shaping the museum’s fantastic collection of 20th- and 21st-century works on paper. I look forward to continuing the work, with others, of building on a museum where everyone feels they are seen and heard. I have a deeply held conviction that art can broaden our outlook and connect people with one another.
Niels van Maanen, 1985, studied art history at the University of Amsterdam, where he gained a Master’s degree with distinction in 2012. He previously worked at the Van Gogh Museum and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and at Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede. Niels van Maanen started working at the Rijksmuseum in 2016 as a collection registrar at the Print Room Online, before becoming a member of the Print Room department. In 2020 he was appointed as the Rijksmuseum’s Junior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Prints and Drawings. One of his areas of focus in the Rijksmuseum collection is sexual and gender diversity. Niels van Maanen has published in numerous Dutch journals including Metropolis M, Kunstschrift and Tubelight.
The Rijksmuseum Print Room collection is one of the top five collections of works on paper globally, specialising in 17th-century prints and drawings from an international perspective. In recent years, the Print Room has made great efforts to assemble a representative overview of Dutch prints and drawings of the 20th century. The collection also includes important 19th- and 20th-century photographic works. The print room collection comprises more than 800,000 works on paper.
