Stijn Huijts Biography
Stijn Huijts (1959) is currently Director of the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht.
From December, 2007 until February 2012 he was director of SCHUNCK * in Heerlen, a combination of a museum for modern and contemporary art and a multidisciplinary setting for presentation and education in the field of visual arts, architecture, literature, music and dance. From 1996 to 2007 he was director of the Museum Domain in Sittard.
Huijts was trained as an artist at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Maastricht and then studied Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He organized numerous exhibitions in the field of international contemporary art, including exhibitions by Pipilotti Rist, Bjarne Melgaard, Ed Templeton, Rita Ackermann, Bas Jan Ader, Öyvind Fahlström, Wim Delvoye, Folkert de Jong, Cao Fei, Erwin Wurm, Kim Gordon, Chris Johanson, Barry McGee, Ray Johnson, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Oscar Niemeyer, John Cage, Niki de Saint Phalle, Stanley Donwood en Shaun Gladwell.
His texts about artists, contemporary art and museums were published in various catalogs, magazines and newspapers. In 2004, Huijts was the curator of the Dutch contribution to the 26th Biennale of São Paulo. In 2005, he made an group exhibition of young Dutch artists at the Roberts & Tilton Gallery in Los Angeles.
Between 2000 and 2006 he worked with the Museo Leonardiano in Vinci, the Arken Museum of Copenhagen, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and SMAK in Ghent in the project "Rinascimento-Nascimento," a project which explored links between ancient art and contemporary art.
Since 2007 he is the Dutch representative for the international exchange Made in Mirrors, a sustainable exchange program in collaboration with colleagues in China (Guangzhou), Brazil (Recife) and Egypt (Cairo). Together with the patron / collector Albert Groot, he started in March 2011 in Heerlen, the first Dutch Collectors House. Recently he organized an exhibition of young Dutch artists for La Fabrique in Montrouge (Paris).
