Since 2019, Van der Lingen has been director of the Mondriaan Fund, the national cultural fund for visual arts and heritage in the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the kingdom. On behalf of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the fund supports projects and activities undertaken by art venues, museums and heritage organisations in the Netherlands and abroad, as well as the professional development of artists and curators. It is also responsible for the Dutch entry to the Venice Biennale and for organising the Prix de Rome for the visual arts, with the winning work currently on display at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Under his leadership, the fund guided the sector through the coronavirus pandemic and placed even greater emphasis on improving the representation of the population in the arts and heritage sector, supporting regions outside the Randstad, strengthening the emancipation and independence of visual artists, and expanding access to art and cultural heritage.
Prior to this, Van der Lingen curated several exhibitions for the Fries Museum, which were acclaimed by both press and public alike. As curator, he organised the major retrospective Éric Van Hove: Fenduq, in which Van Hove, together with a team of craftspeople from Friesland, Sweden, Indonesia and Morocco, created striking replicas of engine blocks in materials such as wood, copper and mother-of-pearl. Van der Lingen also curated Phantom Limb: Art beyond Escher, a contemporary complement to the blockbuster Escher on Tour, in which ten international artists transported visitors into a world where nothing is what it seems.
Van der Lingen studied visual arts at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and completed a Master's degree in Digital Arts at Middlesex University in London. Until 2017, he was director and curator of Nest, a nationally and internationally recognised art platform with a particular focus on the relationship between art and the public. He has also worked as a guest curator at TENT in Rotterdam, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen.
