Patron and founder of private museum for Japanese prints Elise Wessels (80) passed away

Art collector and patron Elise Wessels passed away on Tuesday morning after a short illness at the age of 80. This is reported by a board member of the Für Elise foundation, founded by Wessels.

Elise Wessels-Van Houd, formerly married to Cees Wessels of the Roadrunner Records record label, started collecting Japanese prints in the 1980s. With the advice of experts, her collection has grown into an almost complete survey of Japanese prints from the first half of the 20th century.

In 2009 she opened the private museum on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam Nihon no hanga (literally: ‘Japanese prints’). “What’s the point if I can’t share this beauty with others?” she said in a 2014 interview with the magazine Dutch glory. The most important thing, she said in the same conversation, is “that we can keep the art in our country up to standard and that we can all enjoy it”.

Donation Rijksmuseum

On the occasion of her 80th birthday, Wessels donated 1,100 prints from her print room to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in October 2022. A donation that made the Rijksmuseum’s collection of Japanese work on paper one of the most important in Europe, says director Taco Dibbits.

“Elise Wessels had guts, a good eye and was incredibly generous,” says Dibbits. “Nobody looked at that early twentieth-century Japanese print when she started collecting it.” Wessels did not give up when the Rijksmuseum trucks came to collect her collection, says Dibbits. “Elise immediately said she was going to collect contemporary Japanese prints.”

With her foundation Für Elise, Wessels supported various cultural institutions. She had registered funds with, among others, the Dutch National Opera & Ballet and The Concertgebouw. She was also a loyal patron of the Van Gogh Museum, the Holland Festival, the Cello Biennale, and the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble. She helped Japanese musicians from the Concertgebouw Orchestra to get a better instrument. Cultural funding is not just a government task, Wessels said ten years ago in conversation with NRC. “Private enthusiasts must take their responsibility.”