Art Historian and Director, Droom en Daad
Wim Pijbes is director of the philanthropic foundation Droom en Daad in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and an art historian and Emeritus general director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
His initiatives there include the transformation and grand reopening of the museum in April 2013. With the reopening of the Rijksmuseum, he launched Rijksstudio and the open-content museum, the first digital application that provides free images of the entire museum collection to everyone, free of charge. He writes extensively about art, the role of museums in society and philanthropy.
Previously, he was a professor of humanities at the University of Cambridge. He is a board member of Voorlinden Museum and Gardens and global chairman of Vetting for TEFAF, the European Fine Art Foundation in Maastricht, the Netherlands and in New York. He has served as chairman of the Supervisory Board of Droog Design, a board member of the Rembrandt Association and a trustee of the European Fine Art Foundation. He was a member of the juries for the new Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (2007), the British Art Fund Museum of the Year (2014), the Libris Prize for Literature (2015), the Netherlands Best Building of the Year (2015) and the Maritime Museum Antwerp (2017).
Droom en Daad has added new cultural institutes to the city of Rotterdam, including Batavierhuis in 2019 and the Muziekwerf in 2023. In 2025, Droom en Daad will open five new cultural institutes; FENIX, the new art museum about Migration, will be opened by Her Majesty Queen Máxima on May 15.
Photo credit: Vincent Mentzel
