Professor Parzinger, the Berlin State Museums have had a successful year. In 2007 they had 30 per cent more visitors than in the previous year – what are the reasons?
On the one hand big exhibitions play a special role. Last year we showed the French masterpieces from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art at the New National Gallery, the big exhibition of Impressionists. That was a great hit. On the other hand tourism has a considerable influence on visitor numbers, and of course Museum Island is very important in this respect. Everyone wants to see the Pergamon Altar and Nefertiti. When the Neues Museum reopens in 2009, it will become another big tourist attraction. But even now we’re reaching our limits. We desperately need the new entrance centre designed by David Chipperfield, so that we can distribute the streams of visitors more easily and provide better, more up-to-date services in line with such an outstanding museum complex.
People queued up for the MoMA exhibition in Berlin, and the success of the Impressionists from the Met was enormous, too. Does the future belong to “blockbuster” exhibitions?
We shouldn’t put ourselves under pressure to make more and more blockbuster exhibitions every year. We have numerous other important exhibitions as well. For instance, at the moment the Painting Gallery is showing works by Sebastiano del Piombo, a less well-known Renaissance painter, but still important alongside Michelangelo and Raphael. Up to now he has never received such individual attention, and our exhibition catalogue is a standard work with the latest research on the artist. If we organize one or two big exhibitions and interest visitors who don’t normally go to museums but take a liking to what they see, then that’s great. But we shouldn’t always aim to get bigger and bigger. In the end serious, scientifically founded research and preparations are bound to suffer. As it is, the success of the current big Babylon exhibition at the Pergamon Museum shows that scholarship and a broad public can be reconciled, when the concept and advertising are right.
There are several million exhibits in the SPK museums, but many are still missing, because they remained in Russia after the war. You have developed good contacts through your research. Many people hope that you can bring about the return of some items.
The “war booty” question is a very delicate political matter, and the federal government is in charge of negotiations. Just because I have good contacts and speak the language well doesn’t make the task any easier. But we are making efforts to cooperate at the specialist level, for instance through the dialogue initiative between German and Russian museums. On 30 October members of the affected German museums in Berlin will attend a ceremony entitled “Loss and Return”. 50 years ago the Soviet Union returned 1.5 million objects, including the Pergamon Altar, to former East Germany. Museum Island would be rather empty without these returned objects. So we want to express our gratitude. Of course we’ll be taking the opportunity to remind people that just over a million objects are still in Russia. But it is more important to strengthen the basis of trust – for instance, through German-Russian scientific projects, exchange programmes and exhibitions. Quite a few projects are already under way – we’re planning a joint exhibition on the Bronze Age together with the Pushkin Museum, the Moscow Historical Museum and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Maybe we’ll find a solution eventually, in one form or another.
The SPK includes not only museums in Berlin. Some of the institutions are flourishing in quiet seclusion. What connects the foundation’s institutions?
That’s an important point. A lot of people think the foundation is a kind of museum holding company, because the 16 collections play such a conspicuous role. My aim is to increase public awareness of the SPK and everything that belongs to it, starting with a brand name and a corporate identity. We also want to publish our own magazine, so that the whole of the foundation with its many treasures and its great potential is better understood. Improving networking among the institutions is also important. The museums have worked together on the Babylon exhibition, along with the State Library and the Ibero-American Institute. The different institutions have to think together more.
What makes the SPK different from other major cultural institutions?
Two features are internationally unique. The first is that the foundation and all of its institutions work at the interface of art and culture on the one hand, and science and research on the other. In the future I want to make the scientific aspect more visible. The second feature is: no other cultural organization exists – not in Washington, London or Paris – that unites museums, libraries and archives of such great dimensions under a single roof. We want to strengthen the links between these different fields. For instance, we are currently setting up a foundation portal which unites all the SPK’s areas of knowledge and inquiry and makes them accessible on the Web.
The name “Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation” sounds aloof, a bit old fashioned. Does this stand in the way of its future development?
The “Prussian” in the name doesn’t bother me at all, on the contrary. Prussia was often far more modern than other states. But if you have a name that is so steeped in tradition, it’s all the more important to show that you are a dynamic institution. We don’t want an antiquated image. We are a modern cultural and scientific institution which cooperates in all possible fields with a great diversity of institutions both in Germany and all over the world, and addresses the urgent questions of our time.
The planned Humboldt Forum in Berlin’s reconstructed City Palace is intended to serve that purpose. What will be happening inside the reconstructed baroque walls?
We plan not only to unite museums and libraries inside the building, but also to create a lively centre for culture and art experiences. Nothing like that exists yet. Perhaps you could call it a globalized Centre Pompidou of the 21st century. When the visitors enter via the Agora, the “gateway to the world”, they will come into contact with the fascinating diversity of the extra-European world. There will be films, theatre and music, a varied programme of events that focuses on cutting-edge themes and awakens people’s curiosity. The first floor will belong to the “Workshops of Knowledge”. They will include the Humboldt University’s history of science collections, those of Berlin’s Central and Regional Library, which already attracts thousands of readers every day, and the research libraries of the Museums in Berlin-Dahlem. All of this will be available for research, but it will be open to visitors, too. Furthermore, we will be showing the collections of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art. There will also be an exhibition area for the great themes of humanity, such as migration or the future of cities. And we would like to invite scientists from around the world to work here.
This will all be up and running in 2013?
That’s the aim we are all working towards as hard as we can. But the main thing is to ensure the excellence of the result. If it takes till 2015, it doesn’t really matter. The 25th anniversary of German reunification would be good date to give our capital something so highly symbolic and relevant to the future.
