THE HAGUE.- The appointment of Iris Sikking enriches the team of curators at the Fotomuseum Den Haag. Together with fellow curator Willemijn van der Zwaan, Sikking will be responsible for the exhibitions programme and the photography collection. Curator Wim van Sinderen will retire at the beginning of 2023.

Sikking has many years of experience as a freelance photography curator, lecturer and writer and was recently guest curator of this year’s Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie.

‘With major solo exhibitions by Anton Corbijn, Erwin Olaf, Sally Mann and Michael Wolf, over the past twenty years the Fotomuseum Den Haag has grown into a leading venue for the presentation of photography in the Netherlands and further afield. I am delighted to welcome Iris Sikking as curator. In exhibitions such as Angry: Young and Radical and Baby: Picturing the Ideal Human, she has offered the public an unexpected take on topical themes through photography. I am certain she will employ her knowledge and expertise to mount exhibitions that will stimulate the public and encourage them to look differently.’

Curator Iris Sikking says about her appointment: ‘I know the Fotomuseum Den Haag as a place where photography is presented in an exciting and idiosyncratic way. Documentary photography alternates with art photography, with major solo exhibitions of internationally established names and more experimental presentations by photographers at the height of their careers. I want to continue this line together with my fellow curator Willemijn van der Zwaan in the exhibitions programme, events and educational programming. It is also my ambition to make more room for thematic group exhibitions with photographers from all parts of the world on urgent themes that affect everyone, such as the climate crisis. I look forward to deploying the experience I have gained over the past seventeen years as a freelance curator at this museum and collaborating with international photographers, photography institutions, schools and designers.’

Iris Sikking (1968) trained as a film editor and photography historian and has worked as an independent curator, lecturer and writer. She has organised thematic exhibitions for museums and festivals in the Netherlands and abroad, and has contributed to various publications and launched online projects. She has recently acted as guest curator of the Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie 2022 in Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg, curated a retrospective of the photographer Chas Gerretsen for the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam and worked as a guest editor for Trigger#3 Care, published by the FotoMuseum in Antwerp. In 2018, she co-edited the collection of essays Why Exhibit? Positions in Exhibiting Photography (Fw:books) to provide a foundation for a broader discourse on exhibiting photography in the twenty-first century. From 2012 to 2020, Sikking taught on the BA course in Photo, Film & the Digital at the St. Joost School of Art and Design in Breda. From 2005 to 2014, she worked for the Paradox Foundation, where she contributed to numerous photography projects as a project manager, producer and curator.