John Kuiper (1928-2017)

John Kuiper at the 1972 FIAF Congress in Bucharest

It is with great sadness that we inform you that John Kuiper, an eminent figure of the film archive community in the 1970s and 1980s, died in Washington, DC on 11 May 2017, at the age of 88.

Dr. Kuiper, who had received a PhD from the University of Iowa in 1960, served as Head of the Motion Pictures Section of the Library of Congress from 1965 to 1977. He then worked as Director of Film Collections at the George Eastman House in Rochester from 1977 to 1987. He then accepted the position of Chair of the Department of Film and Television at North Texas State University, where he worked until his retirement in 1998.

John Kuiper was an active member of the FIAF community throughout the 1970s. He joined the FIAF Executive Committee in 1970, and was Vice-President of the Federation from 1971-1977. In 1980, he co-edited with Eileen Bowser the seminal FIAF publication A Handbook for Film Archive (a second edition of which was published in 1991).