Stephanie Rosenthal to Lead Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Stephanie Rosenthal, director of Berlin's Gropius Bau, has been named artistic director of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. She will take up the post in September 2027.

The appointment comes mid-way through another major assignment. In May, Rosenthal was appointed project director of the Guggenheim's Abu Dhabi satellite, overseeing the museum's final preparations after two decades in development. That museum is scheduled to open to the public in December, when Valerie Hillings will assume her role as its inaugural director.

"Institutions that embrace moments of transition to innovate and to rethink the museum's role in the twenty-first century have always inspired me," Rosenthal said in a statement. "Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is such a museum – evident in the ambition of the Depot, the world's first publicly accessible art store, and in the renewal of its modernist building ahead of reopening in 2030."

She added that her tenure with the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi "has allowed me to expand my experience of working in collaboration with diverse audiences, artists, curators and partners to create a dynamic and welcoming sense of place and belonging."

Rosenthal hails from Munich. She has led Gropius Bau since 2018, after serving for a decade as chief curator at the Hayward Gallery in London. She was the first woman to lead Gropius Bau.

Her record there has drawn praise for broadening the institution's curatorial focus, with greater attention to contemporary artists based beyond Western Europe's borders. She also introduced the gallery's first artist-in-residence program, whose inaugural participants included Wu Tsang, Otobong Nkanga, and Zheng Bo.

She arrives in Rotterdam to steer one of the Netherlands' most protracted museum renewal projects. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen closed in 2019 to undergo a complete renovation. In 2022, large amounts of asbestos were found in the air ducts of the museum's Van der Steur and Bodon buildings, as well as behind the wood paneling in the Van der Steur building.

The discovery prompted what the museum has called a "complex" removal process. The Van der Steur building, designed in 1935 by the namesake architect, is a national monument and is subject to strict regulations that complicate the work. The museum is not expected to return to its main building until at least 2030. In the meantime, it has used the Depot, a storage facility on its campus, as a public exhibition space.

Rosenthal signaled that she sees the museum's collection, which spans art and design, as the basis for her programming. "I look forward to opening new conversations between eras and artistic practices through the museum's exceptional collection of art and design, and to further enriching its relationship with Rotterdam, a port city shaped by cultural exchange and diversity," she said.

Her task is now fixed on a calendar: oversee the final years of a renovation beset by asbestos and heritage constraints, then reopen the modernist complex in 2030 as the public face of one of Europe's most significant encyclopedic collections.