17 December 2021

Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam appoints new curator

After ten years at the Royal Collection with the famous drawings kept in Windsor Castle, curator Rosie Razzall will join the Boijmans in January. The London art historian is making an international transfer to Rotterdam, where she will look after Boijmans' world-renowned collection of drawings.

Rosie Razzall (1986) starts on January 24th as the new curator of Drawings at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. She succeeds senior curator of Drawings and Prints Dr. Albert J. Elen, who retired in November. In her new position, Razzall will contribute to the research and display of the Rotterdam drawings collection. With 88,000 drawings and prints, the subcollection of works of art on paper is the largest in the museum, with masterpieces by Albrecht Dürer, Fra Bartolommeo, Pisanello, Michelangelo, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, Francesco Goya, Leonardo Da Vinci and many other prominent artists. Razzall will also set new emphases in the expansion of the collection.

"I am excited to join Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen at such a pivotal moment, with the recent opening of the depot, which also includes a new home for the extensive collection of drawings and prints. The Boijmans drawing collection is one of the most important in the world and has huge potential to become more widely known. I look forward to further developing the profile of the collection internationally and sharing my passion for drawings with the public in creative new ways."

Rosie Razzall

Razzall in Rotterdam

It is Razzall's ambition to build on the visibility of the drawing collection through research, publications, displays and exhibitions. She will continue to work on making the drawings collection accessible online, for which a solid foundation has already been laid over the past ten years. Together with print curator Dr. Peter van der Coelen, she will also work on identifying new directions for the collection of works on paper. Her first task is to complete her predecessor's work on the online catalogue of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian drawings, co-financed by the Getty Foundation as part of The Paper Project.

It is with great delight that we welcome Rosie Razzall to our curatorial team and to put this important collection in her care. With her specialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and knowledge of French drawing in particular, Razzall gives a new dimension to the scientific staff. We are happy for this driven curator to be making the switch from London to Rotterdam, she is an asset to the museum.

Sjarel Ex and Ina Klaassen, directors Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Collection work on paper, Print Room Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen., photos: Ossip van Duivenbode

Background

Rosie Razzall studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute in London and at the University of Oxford. Since 2012, she has been Curator of Prints and Drawings with the Royal Collection Trust, at Windsor Castle. Together with Lucy Whitaker, formerly Senior Curator of Paintings at the Royal Collection Trust, she curated the 2017 Canaletto and the Art of Venice exhibition, which was shown in London, Edinburgh and Dublin, and is co-author of the accompanying catalogue. She was awarded the second annual Ricciardi Prize (2020) with a winning essay on Paul Sandby and Thomas Gainsborough, published in the journal Master Drawings. Razzall's work so far has focused mainly on the connections between British art and that of continental Europe. Due to her move to Boijmans, with its rich collection of Dutch and Flemish art, the cultural relationship between Britain and the Netherlands is expected to receive special attention.