Elisabeth Tietmeyer appointed new director of the Museum of European Cultures
Press release from 07/03/2012
Today, the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation unanimously appointed Dr Elisabeth Tietmeyer as the new Director of the Museum of European Cultures of the National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage. She has already been Deputy Director of this museum since October 2000 and will immediately succeed Prof Dr Konrad Vanja, who is retiring at the end of 2012. She will take up her post on 1 January 2013.
Tietmeyer, 52 years old, studied ethnology and sociology at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster. In 1990, she completed her doctorate on the subject of "The social institution of women/women's marriage among the Gikuyu". After a scientific traineeship at the Westphalian Museum Office, she joined the National Museums in Berlin in 1993 as head of the European Department at the former Museum of Ethnology (now the Ethnological Museum). In 1999, Tietmeyer took over the Collections Department and the Europe Department at this museum. In the same year, she moved to the Museum of European Cultures, which had recently emerged from the Museum of Folklore and the European Collection of the Museum of Ethnology. Tietmeyer curated the new permanent exhibition "Cultural Contacts - Life in Europe" at the Museum of European Cultures. She is Vice President of the ICOM Committee COMCOL (International Committee for Collecting).
Tietmeyer's rich museum experience as well as her conceptual ideas for the future and development of the museum spoke in her favour. These include strengthening the Dahlem location, intensifying research work and networking with other institutions, as well as the further expansion of educational programmes.
The Museum of European Cultures is housed in the Bruno-Paul-Bau in Berlin Dahlem and was reopened last December after two years of renovation. Its extensive collections of around 275,000 artefacts document European everyday culture and European cultural contacts from the 18th century to the present day.