The Art Newspaper

Berlin Museums director steps down

Massive “Cult of the Artist” shows to celebrate Peter-Klaus Schuster’s tenure

By Rita Pokorny. Published online: 09 October 2008

BERLIN. Peter-Klaus Schuster, the general director of the State Museum of Berlin is celebrating his forthcoming retirement from the post in November, with a series of spectacular exhibitions across the German capital.

“Immortal! The Cult of the Artist,” opens next month across five of the 17 state museums. The exhibitions range from a survey of the role of the artist in different cultures and eras (at the Kulturforum, Potzdamer Platz), to the first comprehensive Klee retrospective in Berlin since 1923 at the Neue National-galerie. It is also displaying a major set of sculptures from Jeff Koons “Celebration” series of the early 1990s. The Alte Nationalgalerie is putting on “In the Temple of Artistic Myths”, focusing on 19th century ideas of image/self-image, while the Hamburger Bahnhof will open a retrospective devoted to Joseph Beuys, and his ideas of myth and Germany identity. The Egyptian Museum is looking at the relationship between Egyptian scultpure and Giacometti.

Dr Schuster says that the exhibitions are his “homage to Berlin”. He will continue to work on a freelance basis at the Getty Institute, Los Angeles, researching the role of the Berlin museums during the Nazi era, and will retain several university lectureships.

Dr Schuster, who is 65, started his career as a curator of 20th century are at the National Museum in Nürnberg in 1981. After a number of curatorial posts, he became director of the Alte Nationalgalerie in 1994, director of Berlin’s national galleries in 1997, then the state museums of Bavaria in 1998, before he assumed overall control of all 17 State Museums of Berlin in 1999.

Christina Weiss, a former minister of culture in Berlin, and now the chairwoman of the Friends of the National Gallery, says that Schuster has proved an “impressive” director. “He became director when Berlin was confronted with the immensely difficult task of addressing the cultural void left in the 20th century by the Nazi period and the reality of a once-divided city.” She adds that he was responsible for acquiring extensive loans of private collections including the Marx, Marzona, Berggruen, Flick and Scharf-Gerstenberg holdings with their focus on modern classics and contemporary art.

“Schuster was capable of combining the old and the new, including initiating the gigantic project of the restoration of the Museumsinsel (museum island),” she says. “He is highly academic with an associative approach to art and has an ingenious way of articulating it”.

Last year, the museums reported their hightest numbers of visitors ever, increasing by 30% to 5.36m, while entrance income increased by 34% to E22m.

However, Dr Schuster’s directorship was not without controversy. There was widespread press criticism when he decided to display the Flick collection to be shown at the Hamburger Bahnhof, because Friedrich Christian Flick is the heir to a fortune made by manufacturing armaments during the Nazi period. This reached its peak when curator Heiner Bastian resigned as curator from the Hamburger Bahnhof in March 2007, accusing Dre Schuster of “seriously neglecting” the contemporary art scene by “simply bringing in with ready-made collections”.

Dr Schuster’s post of general director of the director of the state museums and national galleries will now be divided in two between Michael Eissenhauer , the new general director, and Udo Kittelmann, director of the national galleries (The Art Newspaper, February 2008).