Internationally Renowned Curator to Work at Musea Brugge

Anna Koopstra (b. 1980) previously worked at the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and The National Gallery in London. She also worked as a guest curator for Museum Helmond and as a researcher at the World Museum in Rotterdam, among other places. Koopstra studied art history at the University of Groningen, where she specialized in fifteenth-century painting in the Southern Netherlands and wrote a thesis on material research on the oeuvre of Jan van Eyck. She received her doctorate from The Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2016 with a dissertation on the early sixteenth-century artist Jean Bellegambe.

Koopstra specializes in researching the materials and techniques of paintings, the working methods of artists, and the original meaning and context of artworks. She collaborated on the exhibition Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart's Renaissance (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010), curated among other exhibitions Giovanni da Rimini: A 14th-Century Masterpiece Unveiled (National Gallery, 2016) and Lucas Gassel of Helmond. Master of the Landscape (Museum Helmond, 2020) and has published on artists of the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 2022, her book Jean Bellegambe. Making, meaning and patronage of his works was published, and most recently she was commissioned by Musea Brugge to work on a publication on Hans Memling that will be published in December on the occasion of the opening of the renovated Museum Sint-Janshospitaal.

"I am greatly looking forward to dedicating myself to Musea Brugge's collection of early Netherlandish paintings, which includes some of the finest paintings ever created by the Flemish primitives and other Renaissance artists," says Anna Koopstra. "I hope to continue adding new insights to these artworks, among other things by studying them in national and international collaborations, such as Musea Brugge's Decoding Memling project. My motivation is to ensure that as large and diverse an audience as possible can enjoy these paintings, and be fascinated and inspired by them."

"With Anna Koopstra, Musea Brugge gains a talented curator with important international experience," says Anne van Oosterwijk, Director of Musea Brugge Collection. "Her great expertise in the field of early Netherlandish painting - the heart of Musea Brugge's world-renowned collection - will also be an important asset for the development of our new research center BRON as well as research for the exhibitions that will take place in our exhibition hall BRUSK. Anna becomes part of a team of talented colleagues, at an exciting time for Musea Brugge, with the openings of BRON and BRUSK and soon the new Museum Sint-Janshospital in prospect."