The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach has named a Dutch art historian to the expanded position of senior curator of American and European art.
Anke Van Wagenberg, who currently is the senior curator at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, specializes in Dutch and Flemish paintings of the 17th-century Golden Age. She will be responsible for developing new exhibits of European and American paintings, works on paper, and sculpture, as well as overseeing the Norton’s permanent collection.
Van Wagenberg also will be in charge of the Friends of American Art, a curatorial group at the Norton that supports acquisitions for the museum.
“We are thrilled to add Dr. Anke Van Wagenberg to the Norton family and are eager to see the ways she applies her expansive knowledge of European and American art to further our mission of serving as a vital cultural resource to the region,” Norton CEO Ghislain d’Humières said in a prepared statement.
The Norton’s American Collection holds about 1,000 artworks from the 18th century to 1960, with particular strength in pieces from the first half of the 20th century, a central focus of museum founder Ralph Norton. The European Collection includes works from 1300 to 1945 and covers all the major artistic movements from the Renaissance to Modernism. One of the most important of its pictures is “Christ on the Mount of Olives” (1889), by Paul Gauguin, in which the French post-Impressionist master has depicted the suffering Jesus as a self-portrait with red hair and beard.
The author of a catalog raisonné on the works of Dutch painter Jan Baptist Weenix and his son Jan Weenix, Van Wagenberg studied art history in her native Netherlands. In the United States she has held curatorial and research positions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland. She has taught in the University of Maryland system as well as at Washington College in Chestertown, Md.
At the Vero Beach museum, she curated “Vero Collects,” an exhibit that featured 132 works from more than 50 private collections in the Indian River County city.
“I am thrilled to embark upon this next chapter at the Norton — a highly respected, leading institution that consistently produces shows with scholarly backing,” Van Wagenberg said in a prepared statement. “The Norton has proven to be a significant cultural force in the region, and I am excited to leverage my years of experience, knowledge, and passion to build upon that momentum.”
Van Wagenberg begins her new position at the Norton on June 1.
