Bernd Ebert will replace Marion Ackermann from May

The Saxon Minister of State for Culture and Tourism Barbara Klepsch said that Ebert had “with his clear ideas about how he wants to lead the internationally renowned museum network into a promising future”.

“Prefestinated for the office”

With his enthusiasm for the collections and through his national and international experiences and networks, he was predestined for the office of general director. The finding commission included the British museum expert and former director of the British Museum Neil McGregor.

Ebert follows the outgoing SKD general director Marion Ackermann, who will move to Berlin this spring as President for the Prussian Culture Foundation. The art historian’s contract runs until June 30, 2033, the Saxon state government said.

Ebert, born in 1972, is currently head of the Dutch and German baroque painting at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and is responsible for the state galleries in Bayreuth and Bamberg. He is now starting a challenging job. His predecessor had to prove herself as a crisis manager in Dresden.

When Ackermann started at the end of 2017, the number of visitors declined. She managed to increase them again, then Corona came. The jewelry robbery in the green vault in autumn 2019 also caused excitement, there were hostility from the right, the strong AfD in Saxony, against colonial processing and critical museum work, must also be clarified. With the latter, the new director had to do at his previous place of work. His international experience should also help him network Dresden worldwide.

International experience

Ebert worked and curated, among other things, for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for the Newtown Galleries in Johannesburg, the National Gallery of South Africa and for the Kunsthalle Emden, whose chairman of the supervisory board is his mother Eske.

As a scientific speaker of the General Director of the State Museums in Berlin, Ebert was also responsible for international relations, he worked with exhibitions such as “Renaissance and Reformation” in Los Angeles and on projects in China, India, Brazil, the Golf countries and Georgia.

In 2011, Bernd Ebert worked from Berlin at the controversial exhibition project “Art of Enlightenment” in Beijing, which the Museums Associations Dresden, Berlin and Munich had organized together. In 2013 he moved to the Bavarian State Painting Collections.

Increase the quality of stay

Ebert wants to offer the audience a lot: “It is my goal to promote their contemporary mediation together with the SKD team in addition to intensifying the research of the diverse collections. I am also very concerned to expand the range of services for a wide audience and to increase the quality of stay in the SKD facilities, ”he is quoted in a press release.

“I look forward to making the cultural heritage, which is unique worldwide nationally and internationally, even more better known and are happy to act in the service of Saxon’s passion.”

The museum network includes world-famous houses such as the green vault, the copper engraving cabinet, the coin cabinet and the armory in the Dresden Residenzschloss, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Semperbau am Zwinger as well as art from the present in the Albertinum or the arts and crafts museum in Pillnitz, not least the Grassi Museum for Völkunde Leipzig.