Art education in Rotterdam has always occupied a special position in the Netherlands because from the very beginning it sought a connection with business and industry. Today's Willem de Kooning Academy can look back on a history of almost 240 years of educating mainly applied arts. Its roots go back to 1773, when a group of art-loving Rotterdammers founded the Tekengenootschap Hierdoor tot Hooger. Eighty years later, in 1851, this Drawing Society merged into the Academy of Visual Arts and Technical Sciences. In this new phase, which runs from 1851 to 1902, the emphasis is placed on vocational training in crafts, with the introduction of the subject of arts and crafts as an important exponent; education in the technical sciences at this time becomes more distant from art education. The third phase in the Academy's history, from 1902 to 1945, is a period in which leading teachers are associated with the course and the Academy acquires international stature in the field of applied arts. The final phase described by Van Giersbergen runs from 1946 to 1998. Keywords for this period are: democratization, emphasis on personal development of the student, scaling-up and educational reforms, and also rethinking of the labor market in the 1980s. Wilma van Giersbergen, working at the Rotterdam Municipal Archives, has reconstructed this complex history in a clear and fascinating way, despite the scant source material that has survived. She pays attention to organizational structures, content of education, influential teachers such as Jac. Jongert, Piet Zwart and Pierre Jansen and, of course, famous students, including Kees van Dongen, Willem de Kooning and Joep van Lieshout.