The Dutch artist Pim V. (1961), who has been a teacher at the Fine Arts department at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague for almost 32 years, is accused of secretly taking pictures of women’s crosses with a camera he hid under the table. Among the photos that V. had in his possession were a number of photos of women at the KABK. The board of the KABK announced this to all students and teachers on Monday.
At the end of August, V. was caught when he was taking photos in a store in Utrecht in a fitting room where a woman was changing. The woman filed a report with the police. In the search that followed, he found “hundreds” of compromising photographs.
According to Ranti Tjan, director of the KABK since June this year, “no one at the KABK realized that the teacher in question had been taking photos under the table for years.” The fact that two detectives entered his office in The Hague on August 29 came as a “total surprise”. The Central Netherlands Public Prosecution Service has now brought Pim V. before a court, a spokesperson said. He is being prosecuted on the basis of article 139H: making images of a sexual nature. V. is at home pending the trial.
Full confession
Tjan: „I immediately made an appointment with the teacher, on 1 September. He confessed everything. He assured me that he did not take pictures of minors, teachers and men. He also promised to go to therapy. This is unacceptable behavior for us as an academy, no matter how much this teacher was liked by colleagues and students. At my request, we broke up with effect from that same day. The teacher agreed to that.” The name of the teacher can therefore no longer be found on the website of the academy. The students that Pim V. supervised will be taken over by another teacher.
Tjan took office in the summer of this year after a very turbulent period at the KABK. At the end of October 2020, a controversial investigation into the cross-border behavior of ex-KABK artist Julian Andeweg was published in NRC, which is still under criminal investigation. In the wake of this affair, two teachers from the KABK were suspended. An investigation failed to substantiate the allegations that had come in against them, but both teachers have since left. After a critical report by the Bezemer & Schubad agency, in which, among other things, social insecurity and the top-down management of the academy were criticized, director Marieke Schoenmakers resigned her position in March last year. Paul van Maanen, the new interim director, resigned in June of that year.
For Tjan it is important to change course the tanker that is the KABK. “I have resolved that this whole thing must be over within a year of taking office. I am very fond of personal contact, so anyone who is having a problem can talk to me or the teachers. Good steps have already been taken recently: we have study coaches, a new code of conduct, and the students are once again more strongly represented. And we try to be as open as possible about everything. This academy has resilience and a lot of talent. We are going to show that.”
