Emilie Gordenker

Emilie Elise Saskia Gordenker (born February 5, 1965 in Princeton, New Jersey) is an American-Dutch art historian and museum director. She is currently the director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, a position she has held since February 2020. Gordenker is known for her leadership in the international museum sector,^[1] and her innovative approaches to art curation and museum direction.^[2]

Emilie E. S. Gordenker
Born	1965 (age 59–60)
Nationality	American-Dutch
Alma mater	New York University
Occupation(s)	museum director, curator, art historian

Education and early career

Gordenker graduated with a B.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University. She later pursued her PhD in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, specializing in 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art, with a focus on the representation of dress in portraits by Anthony van Dyck. Her dissertation, Van Dyck and the Representation of Dress in Seventeenth-Century Portraiture, was published in 2001.^[3]

Previously, Gordenker worked at notable institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection in New York City. She also taught at Rutgers University, Vassar College, and the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts. These experiences helped shape her expertise in both academic and museum environments. She was later appointed curator at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh after moving from New York to London.

Leadership at the Mauritshuis

In 2008, Gordenker was appointed Director of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, home to some of the world’s most renowned Dutch Golden Age paintings, including works by Jan Steen, Vermeer, and Rembrandt.

During her 12-year tenure, she led a significant renovation and expansion of the museum, which was completed in 2014. This project doubled the museum’s space and modernized its facilities while maintaining the integrity of the historic 17th-century building.

Under her leadership, the Mauritshuis hosted a number of major exhibitions, including 'Vermeer and His Contemporaries from the Royal Collection' (2016) and 'Shifting Image: In Search of Johan Maurits' (2019), which explored the controversial colonial past of Johan Maurits, the museum’s namesake.^[4][5]

Director of the Van Gogh Museum

In February 2020, Gordenker became director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, succeeding Axel Rüger. The Van Gogh Museum is one of the most visited museums in the world, boasting over 2.2 million visitors annually and holding the largest collection of Van Gogh’s works, including more than 200 paintings and 500 drawings.^[6][7]

At the Van Gogh Museum, Gordenker has overseen several important exhibitions, including 'In the Picture', a collection of self-portraits and portraits by Van Gogh and other 19th-century artists, and 'Van Gogh’s Most Beautiful Letters'. She also continues to focus on expanding the museum’s reach and its engagement with visitors, particularly through innovative digital projects.^[8]

Personal life

Gordenker is the daughter of Prof. Dr. Leon Gordenker (1923-2020), a professor of political science at Princeton University, and Belia Emilie Strootman (1928-1984). Her maternal grandmother, Emilie Strootman-Engelberts, remarried after the death of her husband to Dr. Jan Gerrit van Gelder, the former director of the Mauritshuis from 1945.^[9]

In 2008, she married a son of former Dutch banker Wim Scherpenhuijsen Rom.^[10] She currently lives in Amsterdam.