Femke Diercks

Diercks studied art history at the University of Groningen. During her undergraduate studies her primary focus was on painting. An internship at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts introduced her to decorative arts and object-based research.^[2]

Her master’s thesis examined the collection of the Backer family, an Amsterdam patrician family whose portraits and decorative arts were placed on long-term loan to the Amsterdam Museum in 1910. The thesis was later developed into a publication accompanying an exhibition at Museum Willet-Holthuysen.^[2]

Shortly after completing her Master’s degree, Diercks was appointed junior curator of Decorative Arts at the Rijksmuseum. Early in her tenure she worked with senior curator Reinier Baarsen on the collection catalogue Paris 1650–1900: Decorative Arts in the Rijksmuseum.^[3]

Following a period as junior curator at Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden, Diercks returned to the Rijksmuseum as Curator of Ceramics and Glass. She was involved in the final stages of the museum’s gallery installation prior to its reopening in 2013, overseeing the placement and interpretation of ceramics and glass in the renewed displays.

She is a member of CODART, the international network for curators of Dutch and Flemish art.^[2]

After the reopening, Diercks contributed to the exhibition 'Asia in Amsterdam', a collaboration between the Rijksmuseum and the Peabody Essex Museum. The exhibition examined the influence of Asian luxury goods in the seventeenth-century Netherlands and brought together Asian export art, Dutch decorative arts, and paintings.^[4][5][6][7]

In a 2022 curatorial roundtable published in the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, she reflected on the exhibition’s engagement with global trade, material culture, and cross-cultural exchange in the Dutch Republic.^[8]