Prussian Museums Shake-Up

July 16 2020

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Press reports are suggesting that the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is due to be broken up. This comes after criticisms from its own leaders that the organisation is too large and tied up in bureaucracy. The foundation includes 27 organisations includes Berlin's Altes Museum, Neues Musuem, Gemäldegalerie and State Libraries. It seems that proposals include keeping the major art museums together in a separate foundation.

As the above article explains:

A government-commissioned report by a panel of academic advisors published on 13 July found that the foundation, with 2,000 employees, is “structurally overwhelmed” with “a multi-layered hierarchy and unclear decision-making procedures that mask responsibilities and make processes drawn-out and opaque.”

The report in the Art Newspaper also explains that Berlin's State museums brought in a mere 4 million visitors in 2019, which is far less than the numbers visiting comparative institutions in London, Paris and New York.

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