Anna Tummers is Full Professor of Early Modern Art History at Ghent University. Her research focuses on connoisseurship, forgeries, art theory, early modern cultural history, the technical analysis of paintings, and digital tools for art analysis. She is Principal Investigator of the European Research Council project ARTDETECT: A New Connoisseurship: Smart Ways to Detect Forgeries (ERC Consolidator Grant 101088056, 2024-2028).
Previously, she worked as a research assistant in the Print Room, The Royal Library at Windsor Castle, England (1999-2000), as an assistant curator in hte department of Northern Baroque Painting the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (2000-2003), as an assistant professor in training and part-time lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (2003-2008), as a curator of Old Master Paintings at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem (2008-2020), and as a lecturer in Early Modern Art and Art Theory at Leiden University (2302-2023). She has led and co-led two Dutch Research Council (NWO) projects on Frans Hals attribution issues, evaluating various technical research methods and data visualisation tools: Frans Hals or not Frans Hals (2016-2018) and 21st Century Connoisseurship (2018-2022, co-led with Prof. Robert Erdmann).
She has published twelve books and more than 250 articles and catalogue entries, including The Eye of the Connoisseur: Authenticating paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and their Contemporaries; Frans Hals: Eye to Eye with Rembrandt, Rubens and Titiaan and The Art of Laughter (open access via academia.edu). Her latest book will be published at the end of 2024: Frans Hals or Not Frans Hals: Connoisseurship, Technical Analysis and Digital Tools (open access via https://link.springer.com/book/9783031594885).
