Van der Heide will curate exhibitions for the Van Abbemuseum and contribute to the museum’s programme in which research, the collection, temporary activities, exhibitions, artistic practice and active collaboration with the public come together. She succeeds Annie Fletcher, who was appointed as director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin at the beginning of this year.

“I am honoured and humbled to be welcomed into the Van Abbemuseum, whose exhibitions and programming encourage constituents to lean into the trouble, question, and express themselves when all is not known towards prefiguring more just ways of being together. I look forward to working with my new colleagues to continue to broaden how a museum with a de-modernist agenda functions.” so the freshly announced curator van der Heide.

The director Charles Esche said: “I am delighted to welcome Yolande to the museum as an excellent successor to Annie Fletcher. She has the right mix of experience in the Netherlands and abroad to curate exhibitions with international appeal. She is also a great collaborator with people and constituencies and knows how to bring the interests of art and society closer together. We are looking forward to the new energy and ideas she will bring to the museum.”

Previously Yolande van der Heide was deputy director at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, a non-profit art institute in Utrecht, The Netherlands. There she co-organised exhibitions, assemblies and events such as Het is of de stenen spreken (silence is a commons) with artists Ama Josephine Budge, Ansuya Blom, Babi Badalov, and Mire Lee (2019) and Curating Strategies of Productive Refusal with Gabi Ngcobo (2019). Since 2010 Van der Heide is a faculty member at the Dutch Art Institute, Roaming Academy in Arnhem and since 2016 she a thesis advisor at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.