HAARLEM.- Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem announced that three talented professionals are joining the team. As of 1 October, Marrigje Rikken will take up the post of Head of Collections. She will be in charge of the collections department and join the management team. With effect from 1 September Melanie Bühler will become Curator of Contemporary Art. The museum is happy to welcome her. She succeeds Xander Karskens, who is now Artistic Director of the Cobra Museum of Modern Art in Amstelveen. On 1 August Geert-Jan Davelaar was appointed Coordinator Education and Public Outreach.
Marrigje Rikken: New Head of Collections
Marrigje Rikken (Rhenen, 1984) has been working at Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem since 2014 as Associate Curator of Old Art. She is currently working on the preparation of Frans Hals and the Moderns, an exhibition opening in October 2018. Since 2015 she has also been a curator at the RKD – The Netherlands Institute for Art History – in The Hague, a position she will resign on 1 October. As Head of Collections at Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem she will be involved with, among other things, the new collection policy, the trans-historic collection, setting-up the Frans Hals knowledge centre and developing a global view of the Golden Age. Rikken will continue to undertake research and develop exhibitions.
Rikken is a specialist in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlandish art. She began her career as a junior curator of seventeenth-century Netherlandish paintings at the Rijksmuseum (2006-08) and for a number of years was a lecturer in art history at the University of Amsterdam. She gained her doctorate from the University of Leiden in 2016 with her thesis on images of animals.
Melanie Bühler: Curator of Contemporary Art
Melanie Bühler (Schaffhausen, 1983) studied history and art history at the University of Zürich and NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts in New York. In the past few years she has worked as a freelance curator. She was responsible for Lunch Bytes (2011-15), an international discussion series about digital culture and contemporary art, in collaboration with institutions such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington D.C.), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (London). Her most recent exhibition project was Inflected Objects #2 Circulation - Mise en Séance in De Hallen Haarlem (2016), number two in a series of exhibitions staged in 2015-16 in the Swiss Institute in Milan, De Hallen Haarlem and the Future Gallery Berlin. She is the editor of No Internet, No Art (Onomatopee 2015) and her articles are published in various international exhibition catalogues, volumes of essays and magazines.
Geert-Jan Davelaar: Coordinator Education and Public Outreach
Geert-Jan Davelaar (Alkmaar, 1981) studied history at the Faculty of Education in Amsterdam and museology at the Reinwardt Academy. Until recently he was Head of Education and Public Support at Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen, where he developed attractive family programmes, Studio C, the education workshop for everyone from 4 to 94, and innovative schools programmes. His earlier career included working as an education coordinator at MOTI – Museum of the Image in Breda and at the Zuiderzeemuseum Enkhuizen, where he focused on visitor support for exhibitions and participation programmes. At Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem he will also concentrate on making it a family-friendly museum for young and old alike, and on developing new ways of conveying information, visitor participation and on educational programmes in which students are introduced to old and new art.
