Detail page - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

The New National Gallery of the National Museums in Berlin is to have a new director. This was decided by the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, chaired by Monika Grütters, Minister of State for Culture. Klaus Biesenbach is to lead the museum in future. The current Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA) is thus returning to the city where he began his career in the art world exactly thirty years ago at the age of 25. Back then, Biesenbach and a group of like-minded people turned an abandoned margarine factory in Auguststraße into the Kunst-Werke and established the location internationally.

In 1996, he helped launch the first, legendary Berlin Biennale. He was one of the brains behind an era that completely reinvented the art city of Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2004, he was appointed curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he was promoted to Chief Curator just two years later, establishing a new department for media and performance and organising groundbreaking exhibitions such as those with Marina Abramovic, Kraftwerk and Pipilotti Rist.

From 2009 to 2018, he was also Director of the contemporary experimental department MoMA PS 1, which has its roots in the international conceptual, minimal and installation art of the 1960s and 1970s, but is also always on the lookout for new contemporary, experimental positions.

Before moving to Los Angeles in 2018, he was involved with other curators in planning the rehanging of MoMA's modern and contemporary collection in the now expanded museum building in New York. His move to MOCA was associated with the founding of the first ecological museum council in the United States, he introduced free admission to the museum, founded the performance hall Wonmi's Warehouse and made the digitisation of the museum a priority. Biesenbach brought the museum through the coronavirus crisis without a deficit and significantly diversified and expanded the collection with over one hundred new acquisitions of paintings, sculptures and photographs by international artists.
With his return to Berlin, Klaus Biesenbach will continue to develop the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Museum of the 20th Century, which is currently under construction. He sees this not only as a challenge to rethink the nature and role of a museum in the 21st century, but also to reach a large audience. Creating access, making connections, breaking down barriers and at the same time listening to the public, opening up - that is what drives him. He will take up his new post on 1 January 2022.

Minister of State for Culture Grütters: "Klaus Biesenbach brings impressive international expertise to his new role thanks to his many years of experience in managing major museums of modern art around the world. He knows Germany and the world and is correspondingly well connected. He is a first-class choice as the new director to set the course for the future of the newly reopened Neue Nationalgalerie and the new Museum der Moderne. With his openness to the new and unexpected, Klaus Biesenbach will be a great asset to Berlin's museum landscape."

"Klaus Biesenbach is a stroke of luck for the Neue Nationalgalerie, for Berlin, for art. And not just because he comes from this city artistically. Wherever he has been, he has paved the way for the new, taken unusual paths and seen the museum as a place for many and not just for insiders. The museum, as he understands it, must be open, fulfil a social function and may also be connected to the popular. It is also important to him that a museum intervenes in social discourse with its own accents and looks for forms to do so. He scrutinises the Nationalgalerie's collection in his very own way. Klaus Biesenbach, I am deeply convinced, will lead the Neue Nationalgalerie into a bright future and launch the Museum of the 20th Century, which is currently under construction. This appointment is also important for the Kulturforum itself, because Biesenbach is also a networker of the arts and forms, he thinks in terms of global interpretations and finds new focal points," said SPK President Hermann Parzinger. At the same time, the President addressed words of thanks to the previous director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Joachim Jäger.

"Berlin is building a museum of the 20th century, connected to one of the most beautiful art spaces in the world, the Neue Nationalgalerie by Mies van der Rohe. This is a historic opportunity, challenge and responsibility to illuminate the unique Berlin collections of the 20th century with a contemporary, experimental perspective and to make them accessible to the general public. At the same time, the enormous potential of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation's collections offers an ideal opportunity to work in an even more open and interdisciplinary way. Art also finds new forms in film, architecture, music and literature. It is a great honour for me personally to be involved in this task. I'm looking forward to working with the excellent team at the Nationalgalerie and to the many dialogues with artists and the Berlin public to get involved in this project together," said Klaus Biesenbach.

Press photos: www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/newsroom/presse/pressebilder.html