Judith Noorman teaches in the art historical programs of UvA, as well as the interdisciplinary BA Art, Culture and Politics. Before, she has taught at New York University. Her field of expertise is early modern Netherlandish art. She supervises theses on women in art history, early modern drawings and interdisciplinary subjects.

In 2020, the BA course ‘We schrijven een boek’ (We are writing a book), taught by Judith Noorman won the Education Award for the most innovative course of the Faculty of Humanities. The course, in which students wrote a book about 17th-century women in arts in just a few weeks’ time, also won the Audience Award.

Didactically, she preferences an interdisciplinary approach at the at the MA level and a hands-on teaching method in the BA, such as professional simulations and the so-called Flipped Classroom. As an advocate of professional education (beroepsonderwijs), Noorman prioritizes teaching methods that best prepare her students for a career in art history, museums, and the arts in general. Students who took her class 'We are writing a book' wrote a book in two months, advancing both their writing and editing skills. Students taking her research seminar: Drawings in Focus (Tekeningen in focus) conducted object based research on the collection of the Amsterdam Museum, wrote blogs and made vlogs for Het Hart van Amsterdam, and conducted new and original research on the practice of drawing.

Courses (selection):

- We Are Writing a Book

- Lady of the House. Women an the Art Market of the Golden Age

- Dutch Art of the Golden Age

- Applied Art History: Review Writing

- Drawing in Focus. Old Master Drawings at the Amsterdam Museum

- Drawing Nude Models

Judith Noorman's current research aim to better understand the impact of women, as artists and consumers, on the art market in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. To complete this project, she was awarded the prestigious NWO VIDI-Grant worth 800,000 euros. Please visit the research prject's website here.

In 2022, Judith Noorman and Robbert Jan van der Maal published a book about a newly discovered and unique archival document. The simple-looking booklet contains a wealth of detailed information about daily life in the seventeenth century as seen through the eyes of one woman: Maria van Nesse. The discovery instantly identifies Van Nesse as the best-documented art buyer of Rembrandt’s time, male or female. Judith Noorman and Robbert Jan van der Maal researched her life and wrote a book about her: Het unieke memorieboek van Maria van Nesse (1588-1650). Nieuwe perspectieven op huishoudelijke consumptie.

In 2020, Judith Noorman published: Art, Honor and Success in The Dutch Republic. The Life and Career of Jacob van Loo. Focusing on the interrelationship between Jacob van Loo’s art, honor, and career, this book argues that Van Loo’s lifelong success and unblemished reputation were by no means incompatible, as art historians have long assumed, with his specialization in painting nudes and his conviction for manslaughter. Van Loo’s iconographic specialty – the nude – allowed his clientele to present themselves as judges of beauty and display their mastery of decorum, while his portraiture perfectly expressed his clients’ social and political ambitions. Van Loo’s honor explains why his success lasted a lifetime, whereas that of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Vermeer did not. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book reinterprets the manslaughter case as a sign that Van Loo’s elite patrons recognized him as a gentleman and highly-esteemed artist. The publisher is Amsterdam University Press and the topic is based on her dissertation, which she completed at New York University.

In 2016, Noorman guest curated the exhibition Rembrandt’s Naked Truth. Drawing Nude Models in the Golden Age at the Rembrandt House Museum. The grand narrative of the exhibition was based on her postdoctoral research at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, where she was a Research Fellow immediately following her dissertation's defense. In the accompanying catalogue, of which she was one of the two editors, as well as a main author, she explains a unique phenomenon: the rise of informal drawing groups in seventeenth-century Amsterdam and their relation to prostitution, which was thriving at the time. In 2019, she did preparatory research and developed the concept for a second exhibition at the Rembrandt House Museum: Rembrandt's Social Network.

Judith Noorman has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the NWO Vidi-scholarship (2021-2026), Fulbright Foreign Grant (2007), the Theodore Rousseau Art History Fellowship of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2010), the Fulbright-American Friends of the Mauritshuis Fellowship (2013), Lowell Libson Postdoctoral Fellow of the Drawing Institute (2014), UvA FGw Aspasia Fellowship (2018), and Historians of Netherlandish Art Fellowship (2019).

Books:

J. Noorman and R.J. van der Maal, Het unieke memorieboek van Maria van Nesse (1588-1650). Nieuwe perspectieven op huishoudelijke consumptie, Amsterdam University Press 2022.

Helmer Helmers, Geert Janssen and Judith Noorman (ed. et al.), De zeventiende eeuw, Leiden University Press 2021.

            Judith Noorman, Helmer Helmers en Geert Janssen, 'Inleiding'.

            Judith Noorman, 'Beeldende kunst m/v', pp. 333-356.

            Interview with J. Noorman about the publication in Folia. Author: Mella Fuchs.

J. Noorman, Art, Honor and Success in The Dutch Republic. The Life and Career of Jacob van Loo, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam University Press 2020.

    - To order the book, click HERE.

    - For a review written by Wayne Franits (Distinguished Professor of Art History, Syracuse University), click HERE.

    - For a review written by Walter Melion, Candler Professor at Emory University, and President of the Historians of Netherlandish Art, click HERE.

Judith Noorman (ed. et al.), Gouden vrouwen van de zeventiende eeuw. Van kunstenaars tot verzamelaars, W Books Zwolle 2020.

            Interview about the publication and production process. At the bottow of the article are several links to more media coverage.

Other:

J. Noorman, “Rembrandt’s Competitors, 1650-1670”, in: N. Middelkoop and R. Ekkart eds., Rembrandt and Amsterdam Portraiture, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid 2020 (appears in February).

J. Noorman, “Rembrandt in vriendenboeken,” in: Epco Runia and David de Witte, Rembrandts sociale netwerk, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Rembrandt House Museum, 2019.

J. Noorman, “‘Schatten van de konst.’ The Drawings Collection in the Album Amicorum of Jacob Heyblocq (1623-1690),” Delineavit & Sculpsit 44 (2018), pp. 12-31.

J. Noorman and F. Grijzenhout, ‘Lady of the House. The Household, Art and Memoria in the Dutch Republic’, Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Albuquerque, November 1-4, 2018. Published and accessible on Academia.edu.

J. Noorman (ed. et al.), Rembrandt’s Naked Truth. Drawing Nude Models in the Golden Age, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Rembrandt House Museum, 2016.

J. Noorman, “Drawing into the Light. The State of Research in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings,” in: W. Franits (et al ed.), Ashgate Research Companion to Dutch Art of the Seventeenth-Century, Abingdon: Routledge 2016, pp. 321-337.

J. Noorman, “A Fugitive’s Success Story. Jacob van Loo in Paris (1661-70),” Art and Migration. Netherlandish Artists on the Move, 1400-1750, Netherlandish Yearbook for the History of Art 63 (2014), pp. 302-322.

Judith Noorman is Director of the Amsterdam Centre for Studies in Early Modernity.