Stijn Huijts new artistic director of the Bonnefantenmuseum
Mr Stijn Huijts (52) is to succeed Mr Alexander van Grevenstein as the artistic director of the Bonnefantenmuseum. Mr Huijts has been the director of SCHUNCK* in Heerlen since 2007, prior to which he was the director of the museum Het Domein in Sittard for 12 years.
The appointment of Mr Huijts took place on the recommendation of an international Selection Advice Committee, comprising Ann Goldstein (director of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), Benno Tempel (director of the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague) and Beat Wismer (director of Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf).
Mr van Grevenstein has been the artistic director of the Bonnefantenmuseum for 25 years and has given the museum an international quality and reputation. He will remain associated with the museum as an advisor from 1 January until his retirement in 2013. The Supervisory Board of the Bonnefantenmuseum is extremely grateful to Mr van Grevenstein for the important contribution he has made to the recognition of the museum in the Netherlands and abroad.
Resume Stijn Huijts
Stijn Huijts (1959) is currently the director of SCHUNCK* in Heerlen, which combines a museum of modern and contemporary art with a multidisciplinary organisation for presentations and education in the fields of art, architecture, literature, music and dance. From 1996 to 2007, he was the director of the museum Het Domein in Sittard.
Huijts trained as an artist at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, in Maastricht, and went on to read Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He has organised numerous exhibitions in the field of international contemporary art, including exhibitions by Pipilotti Rist, Bjarne Melgaard, Ed Templeton, Rita Ackermann, Bas Jan Ader, Öyvind Fahlström, Wim Delvoye, Folkert de Jong, Cao Fei, Erwin Wurm, Kim Gordon, Chris Johanson, Barry McGee, Ray Johnson, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Oscar Niemeyer, John Cage, Niki de Saint Phalle, Stanley Donwood and Shaun Gladwell.
His writings on artists, contemporary art and museums have been published in various catalogues, journals and newspapers. In 2004, Huijts was the curator of the Dutch contribution to the 26th São Paulo biennial. For the Roberts & Tilton Gallery in Los Angeles, he put together a group exhibition of young Dutch artists, in 2005. Between 2000 and 2006, he collaborated with the Museo Leonardiano in Vinci, the Arken Museum in Copenhagen, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the SMAK in Ghent on the project ‘Rinascimento-Nascimento’, which forged links between old masters and contemporary art.
Since 2007, he has been the Dutch intendant of the international exchange project Made in Mirrors, a long-term exchange programme, collaborating with colleagues in China (Guangzhou), Brazil (Recife) and Egypt (Cairo). Along with patron and collector Albert Groot, he founded the first Dutch Collectors House, in Heerlen, in March 2011. He has recently organised an exhibition of young Dutch artists for La Fabrique in Montrouge (Paris).
Alongside these activities, Huijts is a guest lecturer at academies and postgraduate research institutes in the Netherlands and abroad, and an advisor to the Mondriaan Foundation and the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. From 2002 to 2005, he was a member of the Visual Arts and Design committee of the Council for Culture. He has been a member of the jury of the Royal Awards for Painting since 2008. From 2001 to 2004 and from 2007 to 2010, he was a member of the board of the CIMAM (Comité International des Musées d’Art Moderne). And from 2006 to 2011, he was a member of the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN), now known as The Dutch National Heritage Board (RCE).
