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Change in the office of Director General of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Director of the Nationalgalerie
Press release from 10/31/2008
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Minister of State for Culture Bernd Neumann, and the President of the Foundation, Prof Dr Hermann Parzinger, today bid farewell to Prof Dr Peter-Klaus Schuster as Director General of the National Museums in Berlin and introduced his successor, Dr Michael Eissenhauer, to his office.
In a ceremony at the Neues Museum on Berlin's Museum Island, Neumann and Parzinger honoured Schuster's extraordinary achievements. He had been Director General and - in personal union - Director of the Nationalgalerie since 1999. Udo Kittelmann will succeed him in this role tomorrow.
Peter-Klaus Schuster has spent the last twenty years - with a brief interruption - at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz: initially as Deputy Director of the Nationalgalerie from 1988, and after reunification as Director of the Alte Nationalgalerie on Museum Island from 1994. In 1997, he succeeded Dieter Honisch as Director of the Nationalgalerie. In 1998 he moved to Munich as Director General of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, but after just one year he returned to Berlin to take up the two posts at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin from which he has now retired.
Together with former Foundation President Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, he shaped the Berlin museum landscape. Decisive stages in this were the adoption of the master plan for the Museum Island (1999), the reopening of the Alte Nationalgalerie (2001) and the Bode Museum (2006) and the restoration of the Neues Museum, which is due to open next year. The planned Humboldt Forum on Schlossplatz plays a central role in the reorganisation of the museums as a whole, and Schuster made a significant contribution to its conception and acceptance.
Hermann Parzinger particularly emphasised how energetically and imaginatively Schuster strove to realise his visions. He characterised him as an enlightener, a gifted provider of ideas and an inspirer. Many of the extremely successful exhibitions bore his signature. He moulded the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin into an international universal museum and the largest national museum in Germany, enriching it by attracting major collectors. Under his leadership, the museums became ever stronger crowd-pullers (over 5 million visitors in 2007), but also places of research and education with a rich publication programme and a newly founded academy.
The new General Director is an experienced and successful museum director. From 2001, Michael Eissenhauer (born 1956) was Director of the Staatliche Museen Kassel, one of the largest museum institutions in Germany, which was reorganised under his leadership, extensively renovated and renamed "Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel" in 2006. He has also been President of the German Museums Association since 2003 and is therefore very well networked and active in museum politics.
Udo Kittelmann, born in 1958, is an internationally respected exhibition organiser and a proven expert on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries. The contribution of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Venice Biennale, which he selected as commissioner, was awarded the Golden Lion in 2001. From 2002, Kittelmann was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt/Main.
In December 2007, the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation unanimously elected both as successors to Peter-Klaus Schuster.
Background information:
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is one of the largest and most important cultural institutions in the world. Established in 1957, 75% of the institution is funded by the federal government and 25% by the federal states. In addition to the National Museums in Berlin, the Berlin State Library, the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage, the Ibero-American Institute and the State Institute for Music Research with the Museum of Musical Instruments belong to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Further information on the website of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, with their historically grown fifteen collections and several research institutes, form a universal museum with an international reputation and currently well over 5 million visitors a year. Its collections include European and non-European art, archaeology and ethnology. Further information can be found on the website of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
