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Ralph Gleis will be the future director of the Alte Nationalgalerie at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. This was decided this Monday by the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, chaired by Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth.

The 48-year-old art historian has been running the museum with great success since May 2017. Progressive exhibitions such as "Wanderlust", "Struggle for Visibility. Women Artists of the Nationalgalerie" or the major show on Belgian Symbolism were not only a success with the public, they also built bridges to the present and addressed social debates. This is also particularly evident in the current exhibition "Paul Gauguin - Why Are You Angry?", which uses the example of Gauguin's famous Tahiti paintings to examine Western, colonial notions of 'exoticism' and 'eroticism' as reflected in current discourses. His great commitment was also essential for the institutional development of the Alte Nationalgalerie, which led to the reopening of the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche as a dependency for the museum's sculpture collection in October 2020.
With the appointment of Ralph Gleis, the reorganisation of the Nationalgalerie network has been completed. As previously announced, there will no longer be one director for all the museums, but rather three independent directors - Klaus Biesenbach (Neue Nationalgalerie), Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath (Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin) and Ralph Gleis (Alte Nationalgalerie) - who will work closely together within the network.

Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, explains: "The Nationalgalerie, with its now six and in a few years seven museums, is now very well organised. The new, decentralised management structure takes account of the growing importance of the individual houses of the Nationalgalerie for the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and is intended to strengthen them. In Ralph Gleis, a museum man has been confirmed in office who is not only an excellent expert on 19th century art, but who has also shown that a large audience can be reached and inspired by the social relevance and topicality of the issues addressed. He knows how to create stimulating museum experiences. Under his leadership, the Alte Nationalgalerie with its Friedrichswerdersche Kirche branch became one of the most successful museums of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin."
Ralph Gleis says: "I am taking the momentum of my early days with me to take a big step into the future with the Alte Nationalgalerie and the team. Based on current social debates as well as international perspectives and collaborations, I am striving to realign the museum."

Personal details
Ralph Gleis holds a doctorate in art history and studied art history, history and sociology first in his home town of Münster, then in Cologne and Bologna. His professional career took Gleis from a traineeship at the German Historical Museum in Berlin to the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp and the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn to Vienna, where he worked for eight years in various roles at the Wien Museum. He has been director of the Alte Nationalgalerie since 2017.

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