Ode to Louise Smit | Ode to Louise Smit

Colmar, May 27, 2025

Dear Louise,

You are not inconspicuous, modest or quiet yet you remain (in the books) mostly out of sight, in the background. And yet you get so much done and mean and have meant so much for many a jewelry designer, artist and collector. Therefore, for once all the spotlight is on you: high time!

Your life started out special, you are one of two: two-egg twins. You are the youngest but also the oldest. In the medical world this is called heteropaternal superfecundation, only you have the same father. How's that?

After ten months of pregnancy, your sister came first. You came five minutes later. Because your sister was closest to the exit, she held your birth back for a month nine months after the first conception. So it was that you came into the world with hard nails and a huge wig, a month older than your sister. You can guess that it was not a light delivery. Fortunately, your mother survived, although it was close.

Also striking: you are both named Louise and Marie, but the other way around: you are Louise Marie (Louise) and your sister Marie Louise (Rita).

After the MULO in The Hague, you went to the nursery school where you were trained as a kindergarten teacher. Robert, your partner, encouraged you to make your hobby, modern dance inspired by Martha Graham, your profession, by taking professional training with Peter Leoneff instead of just amateur lessons. That cost a lot of money, so you had several jobs in the afternoons. Afterwards, you opened your own dance school.

After the closure of the dance school, you started a new adventure in 1986: your own gallery: Galerie Louise Smit, where your organizational skills came in handy. The design for the interior was to put a spanner in the works. On the floor a grid with small squares of gold. On top of that rusty display cases, all designed by Menno Dieperink and Herman Postma.

Initially your gallery offered a stage mainly to jewelry designers from West Germany, but soon you also attracted young talent. The gallery presented itself at fairs such as KunstRAI, Object Rotterdam and Collect in London and provided publications to accompany exhibitions.

In times when competition from jewelry galleries was sometimes described as cutthroat (in retrospect perhaps better interpreted as the heyday of contemporary jewelry) you came up with PaLoMa. You (Lo) sought connection with “competitors” Galerie Ra (by Paul Derrez), also from Amsterdam and Galerie Marzee (by Marie-José van den Hout) from Nijmegen. That way you could form a block together at fairs and strengthen each other.

Louise, you connect everyone and really arrange everything. Is there an exhibition planned? Is a new book being released? First you get things done, so others can move on and you can fix something else, if necessary. Check double check. You look ahead, pave the way and keep your finger on the pulse: can you still contribute or push or pull something? Virtually nothing is too crazy for you to make whatever production runs smoothly to achieve the best result.

Enthusiastic, entrepreneurial, realistic, pragmatic, generous and hospitable, that's you. Happy to stand by and eulogize. An ode to you, Louise.

Every time, it is a joy to experience how you and your beloved Robert (Smit) have shared loves and joys for more than half a century. A golden couple, that's what you are. Robert can work on his oeuvre and you facilitate him whenever possible. Every artist could wish for such a promoter. I can still hear Robert say: "But I can't travel without my wife, I don't know how.

Unfortunately I never visited your gallery, Galerie Louise Smit at Prinsengracht 615. Just before I dove into the jewelry world, your gallery closed in 2012. But fortunately, the gallery's closure did not mean the end of your boundless energy, friendship and commitment.

Louise, you make so much possible: like Kadri Mälk's solo presentation in 2017 at your home. You also put me in touch with Roland Boelen, son of the collector Ida Boelen. Furthermore, you managed to entice me and my beloved with your enthusiasm to travel to Asolo (Italy) in the hot high season, where Robert was festively presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. One of the first things Robert said when presented with the award at Asolo City Hall in the presence of the mayor (in sneakers!) was that he would never have been there without your support.

Recently we started making audio recordings of your adventures: there are many! Meetings with eccentric collectors abroad, sharing an apartment with Theo van Gogh in New York: you experienced it all. Soon the best stories can be heard on contemporarysesieraden.nl. It never gets boring with you. Apart from being an organisational genius, you are above all a source of inspiration: ideas galore!

With admiration and affection,

Esther Doornbusch

Louise, you make so much possible: like Kadri Mälk's solo presentation in 2017 at your home. You also put me in touch with Roland Boelen, son of the collector Ida Boelen. Furthermore, you managed to entice me and my beloved with your enthusiasm to travel to Asolo (Italy) in the hot high season, where Robert was festively presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. One of the first things Robert said when presented with the award at Asolo City Hall in the presence of the mayor (in sneakers!) was that he would never have been there without your support.

Recently we started making audio recordings of your adventures: there are many! Meetings with eccentric collectors abroad, sharing an apartment with Theo van Gogh in New York: you experienced it all. Soon the best stories can be heard on contemporarysesieraden.nl. It never gets boring with you. Apart from being an organisational genius, you are above all a source of inspiration: ideas galore!

With admiration and affection,

Esther Doornbusch