31.08.2016
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
Dr. Gabriele Knapstein takes over as director of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin as of 1 September 2016.
Art historian Gabriele Knapstein (b. 1963) first started working at the Hamburger Bahnhof as a curatorial research assistant in 2003 before becoming head of exhibitions in 2013. Prior to that time, she was employed as an independent curator at the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) and the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden, among other places. In 1999, she completed her doctoral thesis with the first academic study on Fluxus artist George Brecht's event scores. From 1999 to 2001, she did her Volontariat training as a senior curatorial assistant at the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Kunstbibliothek. After which, as a curator, she realised such large-scale exhibitions as Black Mountain: An Interdisciplinary Experiment 1933–1957 (with E. Blume), Wall Works, Architektonika and Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection (with S. Douglas, C. Eamon, J. Jäger). Since 1999, she has been responsible for the series Works of Music by Visual Artists with works by Rodney Graham, Carsten Nicolai, Janet Cardiff & Georges B. Miller and Susan Philipsz.
As of 1 September 2016, Dr Eugen Blume will retire as head of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin. The art historian (b. 1951) was instrumental in the founding of this collection for the Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in 1996 and has been director since 2001. With his exhibitions and research projects on Joseph Beuys, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, the Sammlung Marx and the Sammlung Marzona, as well as with the exhibition series in the WerkRaum, Eugen Blume has significantly shaped the focus of the museum and its engagement with contemporary art. Eugen Blume will remain at the Nationalgalerie as a scholarly consultant to the Sammlung Marx.
'Eugen Blume is associated with a particularly formative era of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,' said Udo Kittelmann, Director of the Nationalgalerie. 'From his start at the Kupferstichkabinett in East Berlin in 1981 and then his work at the Nationalgalerie in the Hamburger Bahnhof from 1995, his direction and cooperation with the directors of the Nationalgalerie have made the collection into one of the world's leading contemporary art museums – and we are indebted to him for that. With Gabriele Knapstein, the Hamburger Bahnhof has appointed an outstanding scholar and curator as its new director. She has been associated with the development of the Nationalgalerie for many years and brings with her an excellent outlook for the years to come.'
