New director of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin
News from 06/30/2021
SPK Foundation Board appoints Dagmar Hirschfelder as the successor of Michael Eissenhauer as director of the Gemäldegalerie
SPK Foundation Board decided on June 29, 2021: Dr. Dagmar Hirschfelder, who currently heads the paintings and graphics department of the Kurpfälzisches Museum in Heidelberg, will succeed Michael Eissenhauer as director of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Dr. Dagmar Hirschfelder is an art historian. Born in 1973, she studied art history, history, and German in Bonn and Paris. She is an acknowledged specialist in northern Alpine painting of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. After gaining her doctorate at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität of Bonn, she worked at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, first as a volunteer, then as a research assistant and project manager in the department for paintings up to 1800 and paintings on glass. From 2005 to 2010, she was the project coordinator responsible for overhauling the museum's permanent exhibition of art and cultural history from 1500 to 1800. From 2013 onward, she headed an interdisciplinary research project to examine the late Medieval paintings in the keeping of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum from the viewpoints of art history and technology. In 2017, Hirschfelder moved to the Kurpfälzisches Museum in Heidelberg as head of the paintings and graphics department.
In addition to her specialist expertise and her management experience, Hirschfelder's broad network of international connections and her focus on engaging public interest were key factors in the decision to appoint her.