Ann Demeester named Anton van Duinkerken Professor in Art and Culture

Ann Demeester (1975) has been appointed as the Anton van Duinkerken Professor in Art and Culture.  The Chair is named after the Dutch poet, essayist and literary historian who served as a professor at Radboud University from 1953 to 1968. Demeester’s appointment is intended to bridge the gap between academia and the museum world.

Demeester will combine her professorship at Radboud University with her work as director of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. Her teaching and research interests are linked to Professor Hanneke Grootenboer’s Chair of Art History. Demeester will teach a course on The Transhistorical Museum in the MA programme in Arts and Culture Studies.

Professor Demeester will focus on theoretical and practical aspects of transhistorical exhibition practices, that are meant to unite artworks and ideas from different periods, geographical areas and cultural contexts as a way of challenging contemporary themes. Her research is closely linked to the project entitled The Transhistorical Museum: Objects, Narratives and Temporalities, launched jointly in 2015 by the Frans Hals Museum and the M Museum in Leuven. The San Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) has also recently become involved.

About Ann Demeester

Ann Demeester studied Germanic philology at Ghent University and Cultural Studies at KU Leuven. Her previous appointments include a curatorial position at the City Museum for Contemporary Art (S.M.A.K.) and a headship of W139, an Amsterdam space for contemporary art. She also served as the director of De Appel in Amsterdam, where she headed the curatorial programme. She has published widely on current trends and developments in art and society and is co-editor of the collection The Transhistorical Museum: Mapping the Field (Valiz, 2018). Demeester appears regularly as a guest speaker in television programmes such as Buitenhof, Nu te Zien and Mondo.

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• Science Communication Radboud University, +0031 24 361 6000, media@ru.nl