RIJKSMUSEUM NAMES NEW DIRECTOR

Nina Siegal reports in the New York Times_ that the board of trustees at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have announced Taco Dibbits, the museum’s current director of collections, as the new director, replacing Wim Pijbes. Pijbes previously announced his resignation last March and will become the director of a new, private contemporary-art institution called Museum Voorlinden, set to open in September on a nature reserve near The Hague.

Dibbits has worked at the Rijksmuseum since 2002 and will take on his new role after Pijbes steps down on July 15. Dibbits joined the Rijksmuseum as curator of seventeenth-century painting prior to the museum’s closing for an expansion that lasted a decade and cost about $415 million. He spearheaded the reinstallation of the museum’s collections and helped develop the institution’s digital strategy, which has made high-resolution images of works in its collection available to the public for free. Dibbits was promoted to director of collections in 2008.

He studied at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Cambridge, and previously worked in London as the director of the old masters department at Christie’s.