DRESDEN.- The Saxon state government agreed today (4 March 2025) that Dr Bernd Ebert will become the General Director of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD or Dresden State Art Collections) from 1 May 2025 onwards. His contract will run until 30 June 2033. He will follow in the footsteps of Prof. Dr Marion Ackermann, who is becoming President of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation).
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Dr Bernd Ebert is returning to Dresden after the previous stages in his career ideally prepared him for his new job at Saxony's Art Collections. He impressed an international selection committee consisting of many prominent personalities, who unanimously recommended him to take up this internationally important museum position following a multi-stage selection procedure. Dr Bernd Ebert will move from his current leadership role at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian State Painting Collections) to become the General Director of the SKD.
The Saxon State Culture Minister, Barbara Klepsch, issued the following strong statement. ''l'm delighted that we've once again been able to attract an outstanding person to Saxony: a high-profile and sought-after art historian and museum expert is taking over as the new General Director of our Dresden State Art Collections. He convinced us with his clear ideas about how he plans to lead the internationally renowned network of museums into a highly promising future. With his enthusiasm for the collections and thanks to his national and international experience and networks, he's the ideal person to take over the position of General Director. We're more than happy to hand over the responsibility for the successful Dresden State Art Collections to him from May 2025 onwards."
Neil McGregor emphasized, "The Search Committee was fortunate in having a strong field of candidates, with a wide range of different experience: and we were unanimous in choosing Dr Bernd Ebert as the outstanding candidate to lead the SKD. He is of course a distinguished art historian with an international reputation as a scholar. But he is much more than that. He brings to the role a rare mix of legal, financial and administrative skills; he has direct experience of tackling the intellectual, practical and political complexities of a great encyclopaedic collection like the SKD; and he has an impressive track record of exhibitions, designed to win new audiences and to break down the traditional boundaries between art history and other disciplines. What most convinced us was his ambitious vision for the future of the collections as a whole, for what they can mean for Dresden, for Saxony and for the world — and a clear understanding of how that vision can be made a reality.“
Dr Bernd Ebert comments, "In Saxony, lt's wonderful to see how amazingly popular the collections and the multi-faceted programme formats at the SKD are with the general public and experience the depth of the bond between the population and their art treasures. Working with the team at SKD, it's my goal to not only intensify the research work into the many and varied items in the collections, but also promote the way that their message is communicated in our modern world. One of the issues closest to my heart also involves extending the range of services for different groups of visitors and increasing the quality of the time that the general public spends in the SKD centres in order to make their overall experience even more attractive. l'm looking forward to publicising the cultural heritage, which is unique around the world in its quality and variety, to an even greater degree, both nationally and internationally, and l'm more than happy to commit myself to the passion for art that is part and parcel of life here in Saxony."
Dr Bernd Ebert (who was born in Berlin in 1972) started his career in Dresden with a training course to become a qualified banking clerk at Deutsche Bank AG.
He then studied art history, jurisprudence and business management in Bonn and simultaneously gained practical professional experience at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Newtown Galleries in Johannesburg, the National Gallery of South Africa and the lrma Stern Museum in Cape Town as well as at renowned private collections and in the art trade.
Bernd Ebert gained his doctorate (with the highest possible honours) with a thesis focussing on the Dutch baroque painters, Simon and lsaack Luttichuys, in 2005. He spent several years conducting research in the Netherlands as part of his doctorate.
He worked at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (State Museums in Berlin) from 2005 until 2013, initially as an academic museum assistant to the General Directorate and the painting gallery and then as an academic expert for the General Director. In this role, he coordinated the departments of research and scholarship as well as international cooperation arrangements across the collections, such as the EU twinning project with the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi and the exhibition entitled ''The Art of the Enlightenment" at the Chinese National Museum in Beijing. He was a visiting fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2011.
Since 2013, Bernd Ebert has been the Head of the Collection of Dutch and German Baroque Paintings at the Bavarian State Painting Collections and has been responsible for the state galleries in Bayreuth and Bamberg.
His outstanding special exhibitions include »Circle, Sphere, Cosmos« (Berlin, Schwäbisch Hall, 2006/7), »Utrecht, Caravaggio and Europe« (Utrecht, Munich 2018/19) and »Rachel Ruysch. Nature into Art« (Munich, Toledo and Boston, 2024/25).
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