Willem Meint Jans "Wim" Pijbes (born 9 October 1961) is a Dutch art historian and emeritus General Director of the Rijksmuseum,

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

. Pijbes' initiatives at the Rijksmuseum include the museum's complete refurbishment and reopening in April 2013 and the opening of the Philips Wing for photography and temporary exhibitions. In addition he developed and opened RIJKS®, the museum's restaurant. With the reopening of the Rijksmuseum, Pijbes also launched Rijksstudio; the first digital application to offer images of the museum's collection to everyone, free of charge. The Rijksmuseum was the first museum worldwide to ban copyrights and open the collection with a radical approach. The open-content museum dates to 2011, when the Rijksmuseum made the first of 208,000 images available for download at no cost after curators found more than 10,000 low-quality scans of one of its

Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , , see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately succe ...

s online. Pijbes lectures and writes extensively on art, artists, the role of museums in society, copyright and on the digitalization of art. Wim Pijbes holds a position of the Humanitas Professorship in the History of Art at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

, is Chair of the Supervisory Board of Droog Design, Member of the Supervisory Board of Broadview Holding, board member of the Rembrandt Society and board member of Museum Voorlinden. On 10 November 2016, he was a speaker at the

Oxford Union The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford England, whose membership is drawn primarily from the University of Oxford. Founded in 1823, it is one of Britain's oldest ...

on repatriating artifacts obtained during colonial rule. On 30 May 2016 it was announced that Wim Pijbes became founding director of

Museum Voorlinden Museum Voorlinden () is an art museum in Wassenaar in the Netherlands. It was founded and is privately owned by Joop van Caldenborgh. It was opened on 10 September 2016 by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander (; Willem-Al ...

, near the Dutch coast. After the opening of Museum Voorlinden he became a member of the board. Taco Dibbits replaced him as General Director at the Rijksmuseum. From January 2017 onwards Wim Pijbes is the managing director of the philanthropic foundation Stichting Droom en Daad (Foundation Dream and Do).

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pijbes, Wim 1961 births Living people Directors of museums in Amsterdam