The orphaned Museum Island in Berlin with the James Simon Gallery (left) and the Neues Museum. Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpa (Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpa)
–
The art museums in Germany want to get out of lockdown faster. With a letter to those responsible for culture at the federal and state levels, the management of leading institutions have campaigned for the museums to be opened up.
“Our concern is to contain the pandemic, but at the same time to reopen the museums adapted to the course of Corona,” says the letter to Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters (CDU) and her country colleagues at the German Press Agency in Berlin .
“Even after the first lockdown phase, the museums adapted their houses to the new situation with great care,” write those responsible. Museums are safe places in which hygiene measures are strictly followed and monitored “like no other public place”. Most museums had sophisticated air-conditioning technology and space that could control and equalize movement sequences according to distance requirements.
Museums could “make an offer for the hunger for culture without questioning social solidarity”. From the point of view of the management, this includes, for example, the gradual opening of the museums through educational and learning opportunities for schools and the increasing number of individual visits to museums without group visits, guided tours or events. School classes should be able to come to the museums independently of individual visitors. The museums promise themselves “more justice” and “a basic cultural supply”.
The letter is signed by more than 50 museum heads such as Michael Eissenhauer (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Marion Ackermann (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden), Yilmaz Dziewior (Museum Ludwig, Cologne), Eva Kraus, “certainly also in the interests of other directors of German art museums” (Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn), Bernhard Maaz (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich), Susanne Gaensheimer (Art Collection North Rhine-Westphalia), Christiane Lange (State Gallery Stuttgart), Hermann Arnhold (Museum for Art and Culture, Münster), Andreas Beitin (Art Museum Wolfsburg), Stephan Berg (Kunstmuseum Bonn), Philipp Demandt (Städel Museum, Frankfurt / M.), Peter Gorschlueter (Museum Folkwang, Essen), Reinhard Spieler (Sprengel Museum Hannover) and Christina Végh (Kunsthalle Bielefeld).
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210126-99-169834 / 2 (dpa)
– .
