René Lugtigheid
Art historian and textile conservator

Since 2007, René has been a teacher of Textile at the Master's program in Conservation and Restoration at the UvA.

In 2020 she completed her Ph.D. research on the reuse of eighteenth-century fashion fabrics in liturgical vestments. Her thesis defense will take place on March 5, 2021.

Career

'Why make something new yourself when there are so many beautiful things to be saved from the past?' It was with this question that René Lugtigheid's career as a textile conservator began. An internship at the Workshop for the Restoration of Antique Textiles in Haarlem, the oldest private textile restoration workshop in the Netherlands, determined her career's further course. She rose successively from assistant manager, head restorer to deputy director. She specialized in tapestries. About 70% of all Dutch tapestries in public buildings passed through her hands, culminating in two tapestries from the Zeeland Tapestries series in the Zeeuws Museum Middelburg, sometimes referred to as 'the Night Watch' of the Dutch arts and crafts.

From 2003 to 2013, René worked at the Stichting Kerkelijk Kunstbezit in the Netherlands (SKKN). She has researched the condition and storage conditions of textiles in Dutch churches. An essential part of her work at SKKN was the inventory and valuation of ecclesiastical heritage. As a conservation consultant, she organized courses for volunteers responsible for the maintenance and conservation of the artifacts in the church.