DRESDEN.- Nanette Jacomijn Snoep of the Netherlands is the new Director of the State Ethnographic collections of Saxony (SES). She will take up her office on 1 February, 2015. The 43-year old ethnologist is currently Chief Curator of the historical collection of the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, which opened in 2006 as France’s national museum for non-European art. She had been involved since 1999 in the building of this museum, which extends the classical anthropological approach to the artistic interpretation of objects and to interdisciplinary research activities. Nanette Jacomijn Snoep worked on the content of the museum exhibits and on the scientific collection and inventory of 300,000 objects. In 2005 she was named head of the Historical Department, where she was responsible for the care and restoration as well as the digital inventory-taking of this collection and its move into the now world-famous museum by Jean Nouvel near the Eiffel Tower. In addition, she expanded the historical collection through targeted acquisitions.

Born in Utrecht in 1971, Snoep studied anthropology and cultural management in Paris. Teaching positions at the University Paris West Nanterre La Défense and the École du Louvre followed. She has authored numerous scientific publications. One of her special areas of interest is non-European contemporary art.

The exhibitions curated by Nanette Jacomijn Snoep at the Musée du Quai Branly attracted international attention. Together with the former French football star Lilian Thuram and the historian Pascal Blanchard, for the 2011 show “Exhibitions – l’invention du sauvagee" (“Human Zoos – the Invention of the Savage") she brought together exhibits from over 200 museums from around the world. The exhibition, which saw the greatest number of visitors since the opening of the Musée Quai Branly, won the "Globe de Cristal” prize, a highly regarded award in French artistic and cultural circles.

Working with the Director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, in 2012 Snoep put together the travelling exhibition "Les Maîtres du Désordre" (“The Masters of Chaos: Fools. Artists. Saints. In praise of folly."), which combined Ethnography with modern and contemporary art and contextualised the figure of the (super)human transgressor of mystic thresholds. The exhibition was held in Paris, Bonn and Madrid. Recently she planned the setting up of the permanent exhibition for the Voodoo Museum of the French private collector Marc Arbogast, which opened in 2014 in Strasbourg.

Hartwig Fischer, Director-General of the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD): "The museums of the SKD hold art and historical collections of the highest rank, which complement each other in an ideal way. The ethnographic collections are among the most important in Europe, yet are still not sufficiently known of. One of the most important tasks of the new Director is to establish the dialogue between the European and non-European collections, and above all to develop the ethnographic collections as a matter of urgency and to give them the opportunity to realize their great potential. In Nanette Jacomijn Snoep the SES has found as its new Director an experienced and internationally respected ethnologist with wide knowledge and a broad field of interest who will set new standards with museum exhibits of international ethnography."

Nanette Jacomijn Snoep: "The State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony can draw on a great tradition and an extraordinary rich and historical collection. This is worth preserving and strengthening and making accessible to the widest possible public. Working together with the SKD, the collection gives us the ability to cross traditional boundaries and to pursue new concepts for exhibitions."

The State Ethnographic Collections (SES) with their locations in Leipzig (GRASSI Leipzig Museum of Ethnography) and Dresden (Dresden Museum of Ethnography) and Herrnhut (Herrnhut Museum of Ethnology) joined the association of the Dresden State Art Collections in early 2010. This has led to the creation in Saxony of the second largest ethnographic collection in Germany, holding a total of more than 350,000 objects, 200,000 image documents and 350,000 library holdings.