Dagmar Korbacher becomes director of the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett - Karen Tieth becomes head of the bpk picture agency
Press release from 07/03/2018
For the first time in the history of these institutions, women are at the helm.
At its meeting yesterday, the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation decided to appoint art historian Dagmar Korbacher as Director of the Museum of Prints and Drawings. From 1 November 2018, she will succeed Heinrich Schulze Altcappenberg, who headed the Kupferstichkabinett from 2002 to 2017. Holm Bevers has held the position on an interim basis since May 2017.
Dagmar Korbacher studied art history, Italian literature and classical archaeology in Eichstätt and Milan and completed her doctorate in 2005. After working at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg and Christie's auction house in Amsterdam, she joined the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in 2006 and has been a research assistant at the Kupferstichkabinett for Italian, French and Spanish art before 1800 since 2010. She has been responsible for highly acclaimed exhibitions there, including the 18th century print series "On the Edge of Reason" (2012), Botticelli's drawings for Dante's Divine Comedy and the treasures of the Hamilton Collection (2015 in Berlin, 2016 at the Courtauld Gallery, London)."I am extremely happy to have gained such an excellent colleague as Dagmar Korbacher to head our world-famous prints collection," says Michael Eissenhauer, Director General of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. "As a long-time employee of the Kupferstichka-binett, she is very familiar with the collection and has excellent international connections. At the same time, I would like to thank Holm Bevers, who will continue to head the Kupferstichkabinett as acting director until 31 October 2018." Dagmar Korbacher: "I am very much looking forward to the honourable task of leading this incomparable museum with its inexhaustible treasure trove of images into the future. We want to open up more to the public and also inspire younger visitors to enjoy art on paper in all its facets."
Founded in 1831, the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin is the largest museum of the graphic arts in Germany and is one of the four most important institutions of its kind in the world. Its collection contains around 650,000 works of graphic art and prints of all schools, illuminated manuscripts and illustrated books as well as other artistic works from the Middle Ages to the present day. The holdings cover a period of around 1000 years of European and, more recently, international art, cultural and visual history.
The SPK Board of Trustees made another personnel decision yesterday: Karen Tieth, currently Senior Manager Rights and Acquisitions at Axel Springer Syndication GmbH, will take over the management of the bpk picture agency from January 2019. She succeeds Hanns-Peter Frentz, who has headed the institution since July 2004.
Karen Tieth has a degree in German studies, journalism and art history from the Free University of Berlin. She began her professional career in the editorial/marketing/distribution department of FAB GmbH & Co KG. In 1995, she moved to Ullstein Bilderdienst, where she took on a management position in sales in 2000. She has excellent knowledge of the entire marketing process chain, but also of content development, copyright and contract law as well as industry-specific IT systems and distribution channels. Barbara Schneider-Kempf, Director General of the Berlin State Library, where the bpk picture agency is organisationally located, emphasises: "Karen Tieth has over twenty years of experience in the photo market, she has very good contacts in the international industry and with important customers. She brings with her a wealth of experience with which she can further develop this institution at the interface of science, culture and business."
Karen Tieth has set herself the goal of expanding the profile of the bpk picture agency as an agency with holdings whose rights have been clarified and of acquiring further exclusive partners in Germany and abroad.
As the central media service provider for all SPK institutions, the bpk picture agency handles enquiries from commercial image users and, as the "image portal of cultural institutions", is also a national public-law distribution platform for digitised cultural treasures from museums, libraries and archives both nationally and internationally. With over 12 million photographs, it has one of the largest collections of contemporary photographs in Europe. The agency holds the exclusive rights of use for a large proportion of its photographs
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