Antwerp Metropolitan Area
As a scholar, researcher, an experienced museum curator and guest lecturer, I specialized in the art of the 19th and 20th centuries, mainly in Belgium. Inspired by the New Art History of the 1970s, I have been engaged in exploring aspects of 19th century Academism, Realism, Pleinairism, Impressionism and late-19th century Naturalism in Europe. In the meantime, sometimes at odds with that, I have thoroughly studied the oeuvre of a few important players in the history of modernism in Belgium: James Ensor, Rik Wouters and Henri De Braekeleer. The formation of the canon and artistic values in themselves seem to be inevitable questions. Currently I am working in team on research into the creative process of Ensor (see: The Ensor Research Project), and Light, color and form (theory and practice) in Belgian art since 1800. My publications include books on Henri De Braekeleer (1988), Goya, Redon & Ensor: grotesque (2009), Ensor Revealed (2010), Ensor: Occasional Modernist. Ensor’s Artistic and Social Ideas and the Interpretation of his Art (2018 forthcoming), and co-authored studies on Willem Linnig: een Antwerpse kunstenaarsdynastie in de 19e eeuw (1991), Antwerps Mecenaat rond Kunst van Heden (1991), Impressionism to Symbolism. The Belgian Avant-Garde 1880-1900 (1994), Charles Degroux (1995), Late 19th century Naturalism in Europe (1997, 2001), Between Street and Mirror: The Drawings of James Ensor (2001), De Idee Maurice Gilliams (2001), De Delacroix à Courbet (2004), Ensor: Japonism to Modernism (2005) , Jan Cox: Living One’s Art (2008), Ensor: The Temptation of St. Anthony (2014), Kleur ontketend: moderne kunst in de Lage Landen (2015), Rik Wouters en het Huiselijk Utopia – Zot Geweld / Dwaze Maagd (2016), Rik Wouters (2017), The Mediatization of the Artist (2018), Léon Frederic: un autre réalisme (2018), Bacchanales! L’ivresse des arts au XIXe siècle (2018)
ww.kmska.be/en/Onderzoek/Ensor/index.html?_language=en
Acting Head of Department of Education, Communication and Exhibitions, April 2000 to 2005 (5 years). // Marketing, Communication, Education (2016, 11 months)