Ger Luijten

Ger Luijten
Ger Luijten in October 2013
Born	(1956-07-13)13 July 1956 Tilburg, Netherlands
Died	19 December 2022 (aged 66) Amsterdam, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Occupation(s)	art historian, museum curator

Ger Luijten (1956 – 19 December 2022) was a Dutch art historian and museum curator. He worked at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, was head of the art on paper department of the Rijksmuseum and direcotor of Fondation Custodia.

Biography

Luijten was born in 1956. He started a study to become a drawing teacher in Breda in 1977. When he was 23 years old he decided to study art history in Utrecht. In the 1980s he worked as a scientific employee at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. From 1990 to 2010 he worked at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where he was the head of the art on paper department from 2001. During this period he acquired post-World War II Dutch art. Luijten had the opinion that twentieth-century printmaking and drawing should be acquired in the broadest scope. So next to Mondrian and Armando also less known figurative artists and illustrators like as Peter van Straaten and Dick Bruna. He became in 2010 director of Fondation Custodia in Paris that holds the art collection of the Dutch collector Frits Lugt (1884-1970). Luijten changed Fondation Custodia from a closed study collection into a accesible home for art on paper. Ger was also editor of, among others Simiolus and Print Quarterly.

Luijten was married to art historian Regina Peixeiro. He lived in Paris with his wife and son in the director's house above the Fondation. He died when he was in the Netherlands on 19 December 2022, at the age of 66 from a heart attack.