Rijksmuseum curators Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom win AIPAD Award
Publication date: 31 March 2023 - 09:04
The Rijksmuseum’s photography curators Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom were presented with the 2023 AIPAD Award in New York yesterday evening. They are the first international winners of this American prize. Boom and Rooseboom won the award for their decades-long efforts to bring photography to a wider audience. The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) grants this annual award to leading figures in the world of photography. The presentation took place at the opening of the annual Photography Show presented by AIPAD, one of the world’s premier photography fairs.
These exemplary scholars have brought contemporary and vintage photography to one of the most storied institutions in the world, bringing new audiences to the medium and breaking ground for new media in hallowed spaces. Mattie and Hans have curated a spectacular collection while creating shows that engage viewers and expand their understanding of fine art photography.
Lydia Melamed Johnson, Director of AIPAD
It is a great honour to be the first non-Americans to receive this award. The Rijksmuseum started relatively late collecting international photography, which meant we had to be creative. One outcome is that the collection has gained its own unique identity. We use it to present the developments in photography in refreshing ways, with early colour photography, amateur photographs, scientific images, advertising, and more.
Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom, Rijksmuseum curators of photography
AIPAD Award
The AIPAD Award has been presented annually to leading figures in the photography world since 2017. Previous recipients were photography curators at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts; and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas.
Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom
Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom have been photography curators at the Rijksmuseum since the early 1990s. They have imbued the collection with a distinct identity that seamlessly connects with the visual idioms of other Rijksmuseum collections. Alongside writing several books on photography, they have curated numerous exhibitions, including Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century (2014), New Realities. Photography in the 19th century (2017) and Everyone a Photographer. The Rise of Amateur Photography in the Netherlands (2019 Rijksmuseum photography collection). In 2017, Boom and Rooseboom won the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Award for their book New Realities, thanks in part to the design by Irma Boom.
Rijksmuseum photography collection
The Rijksmuseum’s photography collection now comprises 160,000 objects, including vintage and many other remarkable prints, as well as photograph albums and books. The collection spans the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries to reflect the entire history of photography. It is home to masterpieces by renowned photographers such as Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helen Levitt, Ed van der Elsken and George Hendrik Breitner, while also reflecting the use of photography in advertising, fashion, journalism and science. The Rijksmuseum has been able to acquire these photographs largely thanks to the generosity of many private benefactors and the international law firm Baker McKenzie.
American Photographs
Boom and Rooseboom are currently working on American Photographs, a major Rijksmuseum exhibition set to open in spring 2025. It will trace the evolution of American photography from its invention in 1839 to the present day. The US has been the world’s most important country for photography since the Second World War. The show will include work by Robert Frank and Diane Arbus alongside far less well-known photographs and implementations of the photographic medium in advertising and personal work.
New Horizons
This summer will see the opening of another Rijksmuseum exhibition curated by Boom and Rooseboom: New Horizons will focus on recent gifts of contemporary colour photography by the likes of Pieter Hugo, Viviane Sassen, Ruud van Empel, Michael Wolf and Erwin Olaf.
Downloads
Michael Lee, President AIPAD, Mattie Boom, curator photography Rijksmuseum, Hans Rooseboom, curator photography Rijksmuseum, and Lydia Melamed Johnson, Executive Director AIPAD. Photo: ©Andy Ryan
Hans Rooseboom (left) and Mattie Boom at the installation of the Modern Times show in the Rijksmuseum, 2014. Photo: ©Vincent Mentzel