Rudi Fuchs

Rudolf Herman Fuchs was born on 28 April 1942 in Eindhoven, in the southern Netherlands. As a boy he discovered modern art in the Van Abbemuseum in his home town, the museum he would later lead. He was a member of the Dutch youth nature association (Nederlandse Jeugdbond voor Natuur). From 1962 he was already writing art criticism, first for the Eindhovens Dagblad.

Fuchs studied art history at Leiden University (Dutch Wikipedia gives the years 1967 to 1975). After graduating he became a research associate (wetenschappelijk medewerker) at the university's Art History Institute, where he taught for several years, lecturing with ease on Rembrandt as well as on contemporary artists. His first book, Rembrandt en Amsterdam, appeared in 1968. He seemed destined for a professorship, but when the Leiden chair fell vacant his application was unsuccessful.

In 1975, aged 32, Fuchs became director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the youngest museum director in the Netherlands at the time. With a modest budget he staged exhibitions of Gilbert & George, Lawrence Weiner, Daniel Buren, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Richard Long, and later Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Jannis Kounellis and Arnulf Rainer. He shifted the museum's focus from American to contemporary European art.

In 1982 he was artistic director of documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany, the first Dutchman in that role. He emphasised painting and conceptual art and showed young artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe. The show drew a record attendance.

From 1984 he was also artistic director of the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea at the Castello di Rivoli near Turin (sources give an end date of 1990 or 1991). From 1987 he directed the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (now Kunstmuseum Den Haag), and in February 1993 he succeeded Wim Beeren at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, first as general director and later as artistic director after business director Stevijn van Heusden became general director. He left on 1 January 2003.

Later he was the first professor holding the chair for art presentation at the University of Amsterdam (2005 to 2007), a weekly columnist for De Groene Amsterdammer (2009 to 2022), selector of works for ArtZuid (2015) and guest curator of Opwinding (Excitement) at the Stedelijk in 2016. As a guest curator he also made shows of Jan Dibbets (1987, including the Guggenheim in New York), Arnulf Rainer (1989, Guggenheim and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago), Views from Abroad at the Whitney Museum (1995) and, with Jan Hoet, a show of modern Dutch and Flemish art at Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1997).

Fuchs broke early with the habit of presenting art by movement, period or artist. Instead he combined works from different eras and styles to provoke looking, an approach he developed in the Coupletten series at the Stedelijk. His weekly essays for De Groene Amsterdammer did the same on the page, setting two seemingly unrelated works side by side, for example a brightly coloured painting by the Cobra artist Asger Jorn next to a wide landscape by the much younger Robert Zandvliet. Critics later reproached him for returning again and again to the same circle of artist friends, such as Baselitz and Rainer, while giving less attention to newer names.

Fuchs was married to the translator Nelleke van Maaren, who died in 2014. They had three children: a daughter, Titia (born 1967), who became a lawyer, and twin sons born in 1970, one of whom is the graphic designer Rutger Fuchs. He lived in Amsterdam and, according to a 2010 text, also in Norfolk, England.

Fuchs consistently argued that a museum should choose the best art rather than chase the largest audiences, and told the city of The Hague so before he took the job there. He described himself, looking back in 2016, as a failed poet who would most have liked to sing. Commentators described him as one of the last of a type of museum director who, like a teacher, guides visitors through the world of art.

Fuchs played a defining role in building the national art collection of the Netherlands, bringing minimal art, conceptual art and the new painting of the 1970s and 1980s into Dutch museums. His documenta 7 is remembered for its record attendance and for showing artists who later entered the canon. His 2016 Stedelijk exhibition Opwinding, of a hundred of his acquisitions, underlined that contribution. He also served on many boards, including the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, and chaired the international committee of museums of modern art CIMAM from 1991 to 2000.

Knight of the Order of St. Olav, Norway (1996). Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion (1998). Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (1998). Commander of the Order of the Oak Crown, Luxembourg (1999). Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2002). Honorary Medal for Merits toward Museum Collections, City of Amsterdam (2004). Honorary Medal for Art and Science of the House Order of Orange (31 October 2007). Dutch Prize for Art Criticism (2011).

Rembrandt en Amsterdam (1968). Antonio Calderara (1973). Wegen der Nederlandse schilderkunst (1979). Richard Long (1986). Edvard Munch (1991). Jan Dibbets, with Gloria Moore (1991). Tussen kunstenaars (2002). Schilderen in Nederland: de geschiedenis van 1000 jaar kunst (2004). Rembrandt spreekt: een verslag (2006). Kijken. Een leesboek over kunst (2011). He also wrote hundreds of reviews and essays for NRC Handelsblad, De Gids and De Groene Amsterdammer, and appeared in Wim Kayzer's VPRO series Van de schoonheid en de troost (Of Beauty and Consolation).

Fuchs paid little attention to the business side of his museums. He left the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague with an operating deficit of about four million guilders. At the Stedelijk, the Álvaro Siza extension plan, estimated at 90 million euros against 56.7 million available, could not go ahead, and he chose to step down rather than spend his last years in a building site. At his departure the Dutch fiscal investigation service FIOD looked into the non-payment of six percent import VAT on five works by Karel Appel lent to the museum. Fuchs was able to clear up the matter, but his farewell celebration in April 2003 was postponed.

Rudi Fuchs died on the evening of Sunday 25 October 2026 in Amsterdam, where he lived, aged 84. His family confirmed the death to the ANP news agency on 26 October after it was first reported by Het Parool, saying: "Throughout his working life he devoted himself to the visual arts at home and abroad." The cause of death was not made public. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.