Tijmen van Grootheest is a heavyweight in the Dutch art world who reshaped both institutions and art education. He worked at the Stedelijk Museum and Museum Fodor, an experience he regards as formative. He then spent eight years at the Ministry of Culture as head of Fine Arts, where he oversaw major initiatives including the Mondriaan Fund. After that, he returned to Amsterdam as director of the Amsterdam Foundation for the Arts (AFK), integrating art into public spaces and city life.

In 1999, he became principal of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, a position he held until 2014. There, he pioneered the Creator Doctus (CrD), a practice-based alternative to the traditional PhD that values actual art-making over academic writing, leaving a lasting mark on art education in the Netherlands.onds and running AFK Amsterdaam Fonds voor de Kunsten while it still was a decent institute.