ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS.- Sjarel Ex, Director of the Central Museum in Utrecht, was recently appointed Director of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam by the Mayor and Aldermen of Rotterdam. He is to fill this new position as of June 2004. Sjarel Ex, born in 1957 , has been the artistic and commercial director of the Central Museum in Utrecht, the Rietveld Schroder House and Oud-Amelisweerd Manor since 1988. During his period as Director, the approximately 47,000 collection pieces that belong to the Central Museum were made accessible in a six-volume collection catalogue funded by the VSB Fund and the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles. Volume 7, the catalogue of prints and drawings, is to be presented in the summer of 2004. In addition, 75 academic publications and catalogues were presented under Ex’s supervision, the collection was expanded by more than 2,500 purchases and the museum building was renovated in the period from 1994 to 1998.

Sjarel Ex was responsible for more than 300 exhibitions at the Central Museum including solo presentations of Old Dutch Masters such as Pieter Saenredam and Jan van Scorel, twentieth-century modern artists Gerrit Rietveld and Theo van Doesburg, and contemporary artists Wim T. Schippers, George Dokoupil and Pipilotti Rist. Sjarel Ex studied art history at the University of Utrecht. Before becoming director of the Centraal Museum, Ex was an academic researcher at Amsterdam’s Free University (VU). From 1982 to 1988 Sjarel Ex worked as a freelance exhibition curator. Among the exhibitions he organized during this period were ’Verdeelde Beelden’ (Divided Images), ’Geent op Bosch’ (Grafted from Bosch). ’Century ’87’, was an exhibition in Amsterdam city centre featuring installations from 30 contemporary Dutch and foreign artists including Nam June Paik, Barry Flanagan, James Lee Byars, Boltanski, Sarkis, Daan van Golden, Rene Daniels and Marlene Dumas. Sjarel Ex has held numerous management and consultative positions. Sjarel Ex has also published widely on the De Stijl movement, and is the author of works on the painters Vilmos Huszar, Theo van Doesburg and Lajos d’Ebneth.

The municipality of Utrecht will start looking for a new director in april 2004.