Rudi Fuchs, the Dutch art historian and museum director who led three major European museums and steered documenta 7, has died in Amsterdam at the age of 84. His family confirmed that he died on Sunday evening, 25 October, after a working life spent almost entirely in the service of visual art in the Netherlands and beyond. No cause of death has been announced.

Born in Eindhoven in 1942, Fuchs became director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in 1975, then the country's youngest museum director. Under his leadership the museum gained international standing through exhibitions and acquisitions centred on contemporary art. In 1982 he served as artistic director of documenta 7 in Kassel, later led the museum in The Hague and the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, and directed Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum from 1993 to 2003.

Fuchs argued that a museum should put the autonomy of art first rather than act as an instrument of social reform, a position that regularly stirred argument even as it shaped Dutch museum practice. He believed in hanging works close together so that their differences sharpened each other, and in trusting visitors to look before reading. That conviction surfaced again in his 2016 Stedelijk survey, where wall labels carried little more than an artist's name and a year.

He remained active after leaving the Stedelijk, writing criticism and columns and returning as a guest curator. Colleagues remember a director who treated looking as a discipline in itself, and a career that helped define how several Dutch collections were built and shown. He leaves an exhibition and acquisition record that continues to shape the museums he led.