2023-06-29 13:36:08
The previous director of the Weltmuseum will succeed Sabine Haag on January 1, 2025.
Jonathan Fine, previously director of the Weltmuseum, will become the new general director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the museums associated with it from January 1, 2025. This was announced by Secretary of State for Culture Andrea Mayer (Greens) on Thursday. The filling of this management position in the largest Austrian museum is an important cultural-political course, which will soon be followed by the decision to succeed Klaus-Albrecht Schröder at the head of the Albertina. The Kunsthistorisches Museum mainly houses the huge art collection of the Habsburgs, making it one of the most important museums in the world. His association also includes the treasury, the Ephesus Museum, the court hunting and armory, the collection of historical musical instruments, the Wagenburg, Ambras Castle in Innsbruck, the theater museum and the World Museum, which Jonathan Fine is currently still in charge of. Since the current General Manager Sabine Haag brought him to Vienna, he is practically an in-house occupation.
Jonathan Fine, who took office as director of the Weltmuseum in Vienna in July 2021, has already acquired cultural-political merits: Since the beginning of 2022, he and an international committee have been exploring the tricky question of how Austria should deal with those pieces in the state collections that in a colonial context, were stolen from the previous owners against their will. In the previous week – ie quite quickly in relation to the complexity of the question – the result was presented in the form of twenty recommendations on 24 pages. This is the basis for a draft law that the Ministry of Culture will develop by the first quarter of 2024.
Andrea Mayer already knows Jonathan Fine more than just from this task on behalf of the Ministry of Culture. The state secretary explained at the press conference that she also had detailed discussions with the three candidates whom the selection committee she had appointed recommended her in an “unranked three-person proposal”. Jonathan Fine convinced her just as much as the selection committee made up of Ulrike Baumgartner-Gabitzer as Chair of the KHM Board of Trustees, the former Minister of Culture Rudolf Scholten (SPÖ), Theresia Niedermüller from the Ministry of Culture, Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and Raphael Rosenberg from the University of Vienna.
One thing that speaks for Jonathan Fine is that he knows the house well and is well networked and recognized in the KHM association and beyond, said Andrea Mayer. And he “left no doubt” that he would lead the KHM with verve and esprit. He understood “the burning issues” that museums have to deal with and wants to face them.
Jonathan Fine’s earlier career also speaks for itself, said Andrea Mayer. The places where the native New Yorker studied alone result in a “list of elite universities in the USA” – history and literature in Chicago and Cambridge, art and archeology in Princeton and law in Yale. Another “plus point” is his previous years of practice as a lawyer, especially in the areas of human rights, international trade disputes and constitutional law. Before becoming director of the Weltmuseum in Vienna, he was head of collections and curator at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, responsible for West Africa, Cameroon, Gabon and Namibia.
“My approach as an art historian is interdisciplinary,” Jonathan Fine confessed, also with a view to his future role as Director General of the KHM Museum Association. He wanted to build bridges “from the history of art in Europe to other continents and times,” he said at the press conference. The collections of the KHM Museum Association are not only world-class, but also contain “the best of artistic creation” that helps us to recognize and understand the connections in our world.
Jonathan Fine named dealing with these collections as his priority. He also wants to increase the international awareness of collections and museums, “strengthen public orientation” and use more rooms in the main building than before for special exhibitions.
Andrea Mayer thanked Sabine Haag, who has headed the KHM Museumsverband since 2009 – for fifteen years now. By announcing her departure in good time at the end of 2024, she made it possible for the search for a successor to result in “a great application situation”. With the support of the personnel consultants Alto Partners, there were 20 applications: ten men and ten women, six Austrians and 14 foreigners.
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