Willem de Kooning Academy alumni from all courses often attract attention and praise for their professional achievements. In quite some cases right after graduation, but long afterwards as well. King of them all is alumnus Willem de Kooning (1904-1997): at present paintings that he did as an octogenarian are on show in New York.

With due pride, WdKA tries to keep track of her alumni, e.g. through the 'Alumni Projects'-section of this site. WdKA offers her alumni the opportunity to have special achievements and projects published on this site – please take up contact with us.

Apart from that, in its Academy Gallery BLAAK10 WdKA frequently presents projects by its alumni. Thus, through October 28 2007 BLAAK10 is showing 'Watching the River Flow: murals by Sonia Rijnhout, Gracia Khouw and Jasper van der Graaf' – all three of them alumni of Fine Art. 16 November will see the opening of an exhibition on Raoul de Leeuw a.k.a. 'deleo', a 1993 graduate at WdKA's BA Illustration. Presently, WdKA staff is programming a special 'Alumni Day', scheduled for May 2008. We'll keep you posted through this site.

Projects by our alumni are presented elsewhere as well. Paul van der Eerden (Fine Art, 1979) is the guest curator of the 'Enclosures' exhibition at Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Otto Egberts (Fine Art, 1982) is showing a retrospective of his drawings at the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam. Film maker Nanouk Leopold (Fine Art, 1992) has produced her third feature movie, 'Wolfsbergen' – as remarkable as the two previous ones. Two very new artists, Wendy Bos and Matrijs van Merg (Fine Art, 2007) are having a show at Rotterdam's berendsen, gallery for contemporary art.

Our alumni of the School of Media & Design quite frequently hit the spot light as well. Recently an extensive interview was published with Susan Bijl (who in 2000 refrained from graduating from WdKA's BA Audiovisual Design) on account of her internationally successful 'New Shoppingbag'. Earlier this summer, the fashion collections by Nada van Dalen, Daisy Kroon and Niels Brinkman (Fashion Design, 2007) were presented on a catwalk on Amsterdam's Museumplein.

Are you, too, a WdKA alumnus, and do you want to (re-)establish contact in order to get posted on our alumni activities? Please notify us digitally by the form elsewhere on this site.