January 15, 2024

2024-01-15 04:41:15

Today, Monday, the application deadline for the scientific management of the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHM) expires on June 1, 2025. General Director Katrin Vohland has applied for an extension of her mandate and wants to continue – preferably together with her current economic director Markus Roboch, whose position was also advertised. In an interview with the APA, she outlined a number of plans that she has initiated and would like to finalize.

Starting in the middle of the corona pandemic was not easy, says the doctor of biology and former Green state politician in Brandenburg, who moved from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin to Vienna at the beginning of June 2020. “When I introduced myself to the employees in our cinema hall for the first time, I was faced with lots of people wearing masks. I found that difficult.” At the same time, it was probably an advantage that “it started off more calmly. This allowed me to slowly grow into it.”

Her participatory leadership style took some getting used to in the company, but she was able to achieve a lot in the three and a half years. Now we are guided by a jointly developed mission statement. “I have become at home here. I have the impression that the house and I fit together, that what I have initiated here is consistent. There are a whole series of changes.” She is particularly proud of the redesigned Hall 50, which is used as “Deck 50” as a laboratory for innovative and experimental science communication, as well as the newly designed geology hall “Planet Earth”. “Here we were able to show that taking beautiful architecture seriously and presenting current scientific insights go well together. We still have a lot to do in this direction.”

In 2024, the long-planned accessibility will finally be tackled – not a delicate matter for a historic building. In coordination with the monument office, it is planned to pull the windows to the left of the main entrance downwards and expand them to form entrances. Even if it is not yet clear how much of the 100 million euros reserved for the foyer redesigns in Belvedere, KHM and NHM will go to Natural History, Vohland is certain: “This year we are planning, in 2025 and 2026 we are building.” She doesn’t want to decide yet whether the new entrance will open in 2027. The redesign of the biological exhibition halls will certainly be completed by 2030. In 2024, the NHM will build new elevators in the courtyard and a modernized lecture hall, and the new children’s ice age hall will open in 2025.

She has not yet been able to implement the underground storage facility, which the museum urgently needs thanks to collection donations, but she has new ideas to create the space in the main building that the new entrance situation will also require. Parts of the library might be relocated, but above all it is thinking of a new “Botanical House” together with the University of Vienna. With its approximately 200,000 type specimens, the botanical collection is one of the five most important in the world and can be ( once more) merged with that of the university. “That would be an incredible added value for research and the public.” At the TU Vienna, students are currently working on possible solutions for the “Glacis”. What exactly is meant by that? Vohland points across the ring: This section of Heldenplatz, located between the Volksgarten and Heldentor on the ring side, was already being discussed as a possible new location for the “House of Austrian History”. Just as the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Weltmuseum Wien have a building across the street from the Burgring, the NHM might also have a counterpart. “That would be great.” Is that also realistic? It is of course a political decision, says the Director General, but it requires vision and food for thought.

At least she currently has good arguments behind her. About the number of visitors. In 2023, all locations (main building on the Burgring, anatomical collection in the Narrenturm, Hallstatt salt mine and Donauauen National Park Institute in Petronell, note) enjoyed a record of over a million admissions. Before the pandemic there were 842,000 visitors, and in 2022 there were around 832,000 visitors. Because of the many children, the NHM traditionally has a high proportion of free admissions. Would Vohland be in favor of the federal museums, like the Vienna Museum, switching to the “English model” and making the permanent exhibitions freely accessible? “No. We need the entrance fee to be able to pay our staff. And I think it’s good if you pay for a service you consume.” The admission revenue in 2023 was around 7.7 million euros, the basic federal department (including a 350,000 euro one-off payment) 16.97 million euros.

The Ministry of Culture provides very good financial support, “but I would be happy if we received more support from the Ministry of Science, as we are using the collections as a research infrastructure for the Austrian, European and global research community,” says Vohland, who finds it problematic no longer have a purchasing budget. The lack of financial resources is also the topic of the film “Archive of the Future” by Joerg Burger, which will be shown on Thursday (12.30 p.m.) in the city cinema at the museum’s New Year’s reception. Above all, however, the film shows the NHM as a scientific institution in which basic research is carried out in a wide variety of disciplines and the biodiversity that is severely threatened in times of species extinction and climate change is archived and documented. “I like the film because it shows how much the house lives from the collections and the people, and makes it clear how intensely the colleagues identify with it,” says Katrin Vohland.

The film also reflects how precarious the situation for non-application-oriented research is perceived by scientists today. How is the Director General doing at the beginning of an election year, which might end with a federal government that is at least partly no stranger to scientific skepticism? “We are a political institution because we deal with social issues, but not party politics. Our stance is important to us and we will maintain that. I also speak for the workforce. This includes our efforts at inclusion as well as our scientific communication.” And the topic of soil sealing will certainly not be missing from the exhibition planned for 2024 on the topic of “soils”, which is extremely important in the climate crisis, she promises.

(The interview was conducted by Wolfgang Huber-Lang/APA)

(S E R V I C E – https://www.nhm-wien.ac.at/)

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