Geert Sels

Geert Sels

Geert Sels (1965) is a specialist in German studies and in dramatics (KU Leuven). He worked as a journalist for the Flemish public proadcaster VRT and the Flemish newspaper De Morgen. Currently, he is culture editor at De Standaard newspaper, which he joined in 1996. In his previous employments he wrote articles about theater - in 2005, he published 'Accidenten van een zaalwachter' - a monograph on theater director Luk Perceval. He currently writes on subjects such as architecture, cultural policy, counterfeiting in the art world and the looting of works of art.

He was awarded the De Loep prize for investigative journalism in 2014 for a series of articles about Nazi-confiscated art. In 2016, he wrote a series of articles about paintings that disappeared from Belgium during the war and that are still somewhere abroad. In 2017 he wrote the special issue ‘Kunst voor Das Reich’ (Art for the Third Reich) for the magazine 'Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen", in which he states that not all pieces of art from the war period conserved at Belgian musea can seamlessly be traced back to their origins. The book "Art for the Reich," the result of eight years of research, will be published in late 2022.