The trustees of London’s British Museum want Hartwig Fischer, the German-born, multilingual director of Dresden State Art Galleries, to succeed Neil MacGregor, the Times Newspaper was the first to report today, 25 September, an appointment that needs to be formally approved by the UK Prime Minister.
The first foreign-born director of the British Museum (chief librarians have been more international in the past), Fischer is an art historian by training, like MacGregor. Before Dresden, the Hamburg-born director led the Museum Folkwang in Essen, overseeing its David Chipperfield-designed expansion. Before that Fischer was a curator of 19th century and Modern Art at the Kunstmuseum Basel.
The British Museum trustees have been seeking a director who could balance developing its burgeoning international partnerships, particularly in Abu Dhabi, with the demands of managing an institution in London welcoming more than 6.7 million visitors a year with ever-decreasing public funding from central government.
The British Museum’s World Conservation and Exhibition Centre, which opened in 2014, means that Fischer will have the space to programme high-profile exhibitions and prepare international touring exhibitions. At the Museum Folkwang he oversaw major exhibitions, including one featuring some of the so-called degenerate Modern art the Nazi’s forced the museum to deaccession in the 1930s. Lost works temporarily returned to Essen included paintings by Chagall, Matisse and Franz Marc.
Among the priorities of the British Museum's next director will be finding a new use for the now closed Reading Room. The former home of the British Library at the heart of the museum was a short-lived research library and then a special exhibition space.
If Fischer’s appointment is confirmed by Downing Street, he would join other directors lured from abroad to run Britain’s most prestigious national museums. Martin Roth, the German-born director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, was Fischer’s predecessor in charge of Dresden State Art Galleries. Gabriele Finaldi recently left the Prado in Madrid to run the National Gallery in London and Nicholas Cullinan returned to London from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to run the National Portrait Gallery. Meanwhile, Chris Dercon, the Belgian-born director of Tate Modern, is heading to Berlin, as is Neil MacGregor.
