Glass artist, designer, and teacher, Sybren Valkema (1916-1996) was one of the founders of the European Studio Glass movement, or Vrij Glas. In the 1960s in Europe, he exhibited his work alongside that of Harvey Littleton, Erwin Eisch, and Marvin Lipofsky, and later founded the glass department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

The RKD (the Netherlands Institute for Art History) and the Rakow Library are collaborating to make the Valkema archives accessible to a worldwide audience. The collection includes notes, slides, drawings, and correspondence that document his career. The Valkema project is the RKD’s largest collaborative digitization project to date and the Rakow’s first international digital collaboration.

Projected Outcomes

• Digital Collection for the Sybren Valkema Archives hosted by both the Rakow Library and the RKD

Partners & Funding

This project is a partnership with RKD (the Netherlands Institute for Art History), and is supported by the RKD and a Metamorfoze grant.