The mayor of Düsseldorf has announced controversial plans to restructure the organisation of the city’s museums, Monopol magazine reports. Mayor Thomas Geisel is looking to bring the city’s Kunsthalle and its partner institution Kunst im Tunnel – both state-funded but independent – under the directorship of the state-run Museum Kunstpalast, arguing it will reduce administrative and staff costs by installing one general director at the head of the three institutions.
The announcement has been met with criticism from the arts community who fear it will compromise the independence of the two hallmark institutions, prompting artists Helmut Schweizer and Andrea Knobloch and gallerist Stefan Ohem to write an open letter to Geisel, along with over 700 co-signatories, calling for the city to maintain the two institutions’ independence in order to ensure ‘their future viability as an indispensable forum for the discussion of contemporary art in the midst of a dynamic civil society’. The letter warns of a ‘moment in which politicians are narrowing the debate … [placing] culture in a realm of thought and action in which it is judged on its usefulness rather than on its values’.
6 December 2016
