BERLIN.- With the new year, the
Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge is bidding farewell to its long-time head curator Renate Flagmeier, who is retiring. For more than 30 years, the art historian has shaped the now almost 50-year-old cultural institution for product and industrial culture of the 20th and 21st centuries and has led it since 2007 with great commitment and museologically reflexive passion.
Since the first major collection presentation "ohne Titel. Sichern unter. Unbeständige Ausstellung der Bestände des Werkbundarchiv" at the end of the 1990s, through the 2007 restaging of the collection in Oranienstraße under the title "Battle of Things", as well as various special exhibitions such as "Made in Germany - Politics with Things. The German Werkbund in 1914" and most recently "ORGANIZING THINGS", she has linked fundamental questions of Werkbund philosophy and modern design with economic and socio-political aspects of an everyday culture shaped by mass production. She will continue to actively shape the museum landscape in the future.
Renate Flagmeier will hand over the museum management to Florentine Nadolni from 2023. The cultural scientist and sociologist has led the Brandenburg Museum Utopie und Alltag in recent years and shaped extensive strategic, communicative and spatial transformation processes. As curator of the exhibitions "Shaping Everyday Life! Bauhaus Modernism in the GDR" and "Endless Beginning. The transformation of the socialist city", Florentine Nadolni also brings a thematic focus on design and architecture from the GDR to the museum. The new director is familiar with the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge from her own work and from cooperation projects.
Together with the scientific co-director Imke Volkers, the team and the board of the association-supported Berlin museum, the task in 2023 will be to find an interim location for the museum, the archive and the workplaces due to the termination of the museum premises in Berlin's Oranienstraße by the private property owner at short notice.
