De Baan studied French at the Leiden University from 1975 to 1977, and architectural design at the Willem de Kooning Academy from 1979 to 1986. In the last year she started working together with the designer Ed Annink. After her studies in 1987 De Baan, Renny Ramakers and Ed Annink founded the Foundation Products of Imagination, which initiated and organized multiple design projects and publications. In 1989 she created an exhibition in the Jaarbeurs about the 150 year of Dutch railroads and the romances, that had taken place there. De Baan participated in the organisation of the Prix de Rome from 1990 to early 1993, and edited some of its publications. Early 1993 she joined the Rotterdamse Kunststichting, were she was founding director of the Rotterdam Design Award, which she managed the next six or seven years.
Later career
In the new millennium De Baan joined the Fonds BKVB, later the Mondrian Fund, were she chaired the advisory board of the national funding for art and design for four years. She was program director of the International Architecture Biennal Rotterdam from 2006 to 2008. From 2008 until 2013 she was director of DutchDFA, the Dutch design Dutch Design, Fashion and Architecture. Afterwards De Baan continued a program director, advisor and/or lecturer nationally and international form Dublin, to Cape Town and Beijing. In Arnhem she was advisor for the Arnhem Fashion Biennale in 2014-15 and directed the Sonsbeek and State of fashion foundation in Arnhem for a year.
Work
Products of Imagination
Around 1985 De Baan had started cooperating with the designer Ed Annink to research the state of the design and young designers in the Netherlands. Ed van Hinte explained: A similar research in those days had been performed by Renny Ramakers for a series of her articles in de Volkskrant. The three of them decided to join forces to promote the new wave of ideas of those Dutch designer. They started a foundation in 1987, and named it "Products of Imagination," abbreviated POI or P.O.I. Their cooperation resulted in the publication of a book under the same name, and the organization of multiple design exhibitions.
DutchDFA
In 2013 the DutchDFA came to and ending, and its funding tasks merged into the Stimulation fund for the Creative Industry.
Selected publications
Ed Annink, Christine de Baan, Renny Ramakers. Products of Imagination, The Dutch Experiment in Design. 1987.
