Beatrix Ruf. Photo Robin de Puy.
Beatrix Ruf has been appointed director of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. She succeeds Ann Goldstein, who announced her resignation in August after four years in the job. Goldstein was the first woman and the first foreigner to head the institution, making the German-born Ruf the second on both counts. Ruf, who turns 53 this year, has been director of the Kunsthalle Zurich since 2001. There, she organized the first solo museum exhibitions of artists including Keren Cytter, Trisha Donnelly, Wade Guyton and Seth Price. She begins working on projects with the Stedelijk immediately, and will come on full-time Nov. 1.
“I feel very honored, and am very moved, to be entrusted with the opportunity to be director of the Stedelijk Museum and to lead its extraordinary exhibition history and its collection into the future,” Ruf said in a press release.
After studying psychology, cultural sciences, ethnology and art at the University of Zurich and attending the conservatory of Vienna, Ruf worked as a freelance curator, choreographer and critic. She was curator at Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Warth, Austria, from 1994 to 1998 and director of Kunsthaus Glarus, in Switzerland, from 1998 to 2001. During her time as director in Zurich, she also curated the third Tate Triennial, London, in 2006 and co-curated the Yokohama Triennial in 2008.
