DUSSELDORF.- The State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen announce that the contract of Susanne Gaensheimer has been extended for a further seven years until August 31, 2031. The Board of Trustees of the Kunstsammlung and the State Cabinet have approved the extension.

“Susanne Gaensheimer is one of the outstanding museum directors in Germany and enjoys an international reputation. Under her direction, the two venues K20 and K21 have become open to pioneering international voices. Her exhibition projects on, among others, Carmen Herrera, Ai Weiwei, Pablo Picasso, Hito Steyerl, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and Gerhard Richter, as well as the exhibition on Edvard Munch curated by Karl Ove Knausgård, have all met with great public acclaim. With the newly conceived collection presentations in both K20 and K21, which also include targeted acquisitions of both non-Western modernist positions and important women artists of the twentieth century, she has enabled new perspectives on the collection. I am very pleased that we have succeeded in convincing Susanne Gaensheimer to continue her work in Düsseldorf,” states NRW Minister of Culture Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen.

“My goal is to think the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen forward in terms of polyphony, digitalization, and sustainability, and ultimately to reflect on the changes in the public and the associated role of the museum as an institution and to open it up even further,” explains Susanne Gaensheimer, who was appointed director of the Kunstsammlung NRW in 2017, about her future as head of the state art collection.

­Susanne Gaensheimer is an art historian, curator, and museum director. She has been Director of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf since September 1, 2017. From 2009 to 2017, she was Director of the MMK – Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main. In 2011 and 2013, she curated the German Pavilion at the 54th and 55th Venice Biennale, where she presented Christoph Schlingensief (2011, Golden Lion) and Ai Weiwei, Romuald Karmakar, Santu Mofokeng, and Dayanita Singh (2013).