Judith Noorman is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam, where she leads the NWO-funded research project The Female Impact (2021–2026). This project investigates the often-overlooked roles of women as artists, patrons, and buyers in the seventeenth-century Dutch art market. Combining meticulous archival research with innovative interdisciplinary approaches, Noorman seeks to add new stories and critically re-examine traditional (art) historical narratives. Her work extends beyond academia, fostering public engagement with questions of gender, consumption, cultural representation, and the role of art history in contemporary society.

Committed to making art history more relevant, inclusive, and socially engaged, Noorman’s research demonstrates how gender, consumption, and cultural value were closely interwoven in the early modern world—and how the inclusion of so-called “marginal” actors can reshape dominant historical accounts. She continues to develop projects that bridge academic research and public culture through exhibitions, museum partnerships, and pedagogical innovation, all of which form an integral part of her scholarly practice.

The Female Impact
In a large-scale project, Noorman investigates how women— not only as makers but also as buyers, collectors, and consumers—shaped the art market in the Dutch Republic. Paying close attention to legal, social, economic, and material aspects, she aims to broaden and clarify the prevailing narrative, which has long centred on male protagonists. The project’s interdisciplinary structure includes students, museums, and forms of public participation.

Monographs and Publications
Her book Art, Honor and Success in the Dutch Republic: The Life and Career of Jacob van Loo (2020) offers a new perspective on Van Loo’s career and on the interplay between artistic achievement, social recognition, and moral reputation.
In 2022, together with Robbert Jan van der Maal, she published Het unieke memorieboek van Maria van Nesse (1588–1650), which unveils a remarkable primary source: the personal “memorieboek” of a woman who meticulously recorded her expenses, thoughts, and artistic connections—an invaluable document for understanding female consumption practices in the seventeenth century.
For her edited and published volumes and articles on women in art, material culture, and gender analysis, see: Publications.

Method and Innovation
Noorman’s work combines object analysis, sociologically informed art historical theory, and quantitative data (such as probate inventories). She actively involves students in her research projects—for example, in the course Drawing in Focus, where students conduct object-based research, publish blogs and vlogs, and develop new interpretations.
Her teaching also experiments with new formats. The BA course We Are Writing a Book, in which students co-authored a book on seventeenth-century women in art within several weeks, won both the University of Amsterdam’s Teaching Award and the Audience Award for “most innovative course.”

Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange
Noorman collaborates closely with museums, including the Amsterdam Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar, the National Museum for Women in the Arts (Washington D.C.), the Rijksmuseum), and other cultural institutions. She engages the broader public through lectures, exhibition projects (such as Rembrandt’s Naked Truth), and media appearances.
Through The Female Impact, she promotes inclusivity in museum practice, particularly by increasing the visibility of women in collections and exhibitions.

Awards and Funding
Judith Noorman received an NWO Vidi Grant (approx. €800,000) for The Female Impact.
She has also held numerous international fellowships, including the Hans Brenninkmeyer Visiting Senior Fellowship (2025), a Fulbright Foreign Grant (2007), the Theodore Rousseau Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2010), the Aspasia Fellowship at the University of Amsterdam (2018), and the Lowell Libson Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Morgan Library & Museum (2014).
Her teaching innovations were recognised with the Faculty Award for “Most Innovative Course” for We Are Writing a Book.

Between 2021 and 2024, Judith Noorman was Director of the Amsterdam Centre for Studies in Early Modernity.

Judith Noorman supervises theses and teaches courses 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. Collaborating with Dutch museums (the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Museum, Rembrandt House Museum), Noorman prioritizes teaching methods that best prepare her students for a career in art history, museums, and publishing. Bachelor students who took her class 'We are writing a book' published a book, 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.

Judith Noorman initiated and designed the Art and Media Major within the BA programme Global Art, Culture and Politics. Together with Dr. Trude Dijkstra (2023–2024), she co-coordinated the major and shaped its academic profile. In collaboration with the Teaching and Learning Centre, she developed the content of the programme through a series of four dedicated workshops. The major brings together an interdisciplinary team of lecturers, including Djoeke van Netten (History), Feike Dietz and Frans Blom (Dutch Literature), Trude Dijkstra (Book History), Kasia Lech (Theatre Studies), Weixuan Li, Selena Savić, Anna Weinreich (Cultural Studies), Anna Lawrence, Rozemarijn Landsman, and Hanneke Grootenboer (Art History). As part of this initiative, Judith Noorman created and taught new courses such as Visual Literacy and Writing Women into History (2023–2024).

Courses (selection):

- Writing Women into History (BA Global Art, Culture and Politics, 2023-2024)

- Academic Skills: Visual Literacy (2023-2024)

- 'Anonymous Was a Woman.' Imagined Lives and Unknown Identities in Women’s Portraiture (OSK Summer Course, 2026)

- The Wife of ... Pendant Portraits at the Rijksmuseum (Research Seminar, 2022)

- We Are Writing a Book. Women and the Arts (BA Art History Elective, 2019)

- Lady of the House. Women an the Art Market of the Golden Age (MA Art History Elective, 2018)

- Dutch Art of the Golden Age (BA course, 2015-2018)

- Applied Art History: Review Writing (BA Art History, course coordinator)

- Drawing in Focus. Old Master Drawings at the Amsterdam Museum (BA Research Seminar, 2013-2015)

- Drawing Nude Models. Exhibition Design at the Rembrandt House Museum (2014-2015)

Judith Noorman studies the impact of women, as artists and consumers, on the art market in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. She manages multiple projects with a collective aim to write women into art history, particularly in the Dutch Republic. For example, she is the Principal Investigator of The Female Impact project, which was awarded the NWO VIDI-Grant (worth 800,000 euros). Please visit the research project's website here.

In 2025, Piet Bakker and Judith Noorman discovered that Johannes Vermeer's primary patron was Maria de Knuijt, and not her husband. Based on newly discovered documents and a new analysis of previously known ones, the authors described how and why De Knuijt probably purchased about half of the master's oeuvre, including Girl with a Pearl Earring. Their findings were published in a Rijksmuseum publication Closer to Vermeer. Read more here.

In 2022, Judith Noorman and Robbert Jan van der Maal published a book about a newly discovered 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, whether 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. Published by Amsterdam University Press, 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, for 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 Hans Brenninkmeyer Senior Visiting Fellowship of the Center for Netherlandish Art / Museum of Fine Arts in Boston(2025), a NWO VIDI-scholarship (2021-2026), the 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 at the Drawing Institute (2014), UvA FGw Aspasia Fellowship (2018), and Historians of Netherlandish Art Fellowship (2019).

Books:

Elizabeth Honig, Judith Noorman and Thijs Weststeijn (red.), Women: Female Roles in Art and Society of the Netherlands, Netherlands Yearbook of Art (NKJ), volume 74, Brill 2024.

• Judith Noorman, Thijs Weststeijn and Elizabeth Honig, 'Introduction: Women in the World of Netherlandish Art', 6-39.
• Judith Noorman, 'Household Heroines: Maria van Nesse's Memory-Book and the Interplay between the Art Market and Household Consumption,' 138-164.

Judith Noorman en Feike Dietz (red. et al.), Objects, Commodities and Material Cultures in the Dutch Republic, Amsterdam University Press 2024.

• Feike Dietz en Judith Noorman, 'Introduction: Objects, Commodities and Material Cultures in the Dutch Republic. Exploring Early Modern Materiality Across Disciplines,' 9-26.
• Judith Noorman, 'Blue Paper. Its Life, Origin and Artistic Exploration', 237-260.

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', 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.

Judith Noorman and David de Witt (ed.), Rembrandt's Naked Truth. Drawing Nude Models in the Golden Age, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Rembrandt House Museum, 2016.

Selection of essays, articles etc.:

Piet Bakker en Judith Noorman, 'Women's Vermeers. Maria de Knuijt and New Archival Documentation on Vermeer's Primary Patron', in: Pieter Roelofs (red.), Closer to Vermeer, Rijksmuseum 2025, 146-161.

Judith Noorman, '"Elck heeft sijn eijgen pop": Dollmaker Drawings by Leonart Bramer and Dolls as Indicators of Class and Identity', in: Lieke van Deinsem (red.), Campaspe Talks Back. Women Who Made a Difference in Early Modern Art, Leuven 2024, pp. 198-205.

Judith Noorman en Frima Fox Hofrichter, 'Judith Leyster, Then and Now', HNA Podcast, 2021.

Judith Noorman, 'Gehuwd in verf. De portretten van Ferdinand Bol en Elisabeth Dell', historici.nl, 2021.

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.