Jan Hoet, Documenta 9 Curator and Pioneer of Ghent’s Contemporary Art Scene, 1936–2014

Jan Hoet. Photo by Michiel Hendryckx, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Museum director and curator Jan Hoet, 77, died on February 27 following a long illness. A prominent figure in the arts in his native Belgium, he served as the artistic director of Documenta 9 in Kassel in 1992, and helped open Ghent’s Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in 1999. Hoet came to prominence in 1986, when he convinced more than 50 homeowners in Ghent to let him transform their private residences into art venues as part of the city-wide contemporary art exhibition “Chambres d’Amis.”

Complete obituaries can be found at the Washington Post and FlandersNews.be.