VERO BEACH, FLA.- The Vero Beach Museum of Art announces the appointment of Anke Van Wagenberg as VBMA Senior Curator effective January 24, 2020.

Anke Van Wagenberg joins the VBMA following over a 25-year career at several notable art museums. She moved to the USA in 1987 and began her career at the National Gallery of Art in the department of Northern Baroque Painting. She also worked for the Walters Art Museum and taught Art History for 12 years at the University of Maryland and at Washington College in Chestertown, MD. Since 2011 she has been Chief Curator at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C. Here Anke curated numerous significant exhibitions, including shows focused on Peter Paul Rubens, James Turrell, Robert Rauschenberg, and Bill Viola, to name a few. She was pivotal in the growth of the permanent collection and initiated the artist-in-residence program and launched the docent program.

Brady Roberts, Executive Director/CEO at the VBMA, said, “Anke’s expertise and dual interest in contemporary art and old masters provide her with a broad base of knowledge well suited for our program. Moreover, her connections with living artists, international museums, private collections, and collectors will be invaluable for the VBMA. We are looking forward to incorporating this experience to help strengthen and lead the Curatorial Department as well as Anke’s participation in the VBMA senior management team. We are thrilled to have her on board.”

“Joining the VBMA and moving to Florida marks a new beginning and an exciting opportunity for my family and me. I’m looking forward to working together with Brady and his senior management team on continuing to build and shape the Museum in this new decade and to find meaningful ways to engage further with this unique and supportive community,” Commented Anke on her appointment.

Arthur Wheelock, Jr., PH.D. Curator Northern Baroque Painting, at the National Gallery of Art, said of Anke’s new appointment, “Anke’s extensive curatorial and scholarly achievements are widely celebrated both here and abroad, but equally important is her colleagial and warm personality, which ingratiates all who come into contact with her. She will be a wonderful presence within the Vero Beach Museum of Art and also in the community at large.”

Anke is a Dutch art historian educated in the Netherlands. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, with a dissertation on the celebration of Twelfth Night (Driekoningenfeest) in Dutch and Flemish Painting, which was published by the P.J. Meertens Institute, a research institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has published in Simiolus, Print Quarterly, Artibus et Historiae, and elsewhere.

Anke completed the catalogue raisonné Jan Baptist Weenix and Jan Weenix: The Paintings (Waanders, Zwolle, 2018), as reviewed in The Art Newspaper (March 2019), where Gauvin Alexander Bailey described them as a “magnificent two-volume magnum opus where Anke van Wagenberg-Ter Hoeven provides extraordinarily thorough catalogue entries.” Bendor Grosvenor wrote, “Of course, anyone who writes such a fantastic resource as a catalogue raisonné is automatically enrolled as an AHN 'Hero of Art History'” (arthistorynews 2018). Anke is currently documenting their drawings for a follow-up publication.

The appointment follows a national search led by senior consultant Daniel Keegan of Museum Search & Reference, where Marilyn Hoffman is the Principal.