Hartwig Fischer (born 14 December 1962) is a German art historian and museum director. Since April 2016, he has been director of the British Museum, the first non-British head of the museum since 1866. From 2012 to 2016, he was director of the Dresden State Art Collections (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden).

Hartwig Fischer
Fischer in 2016
Born	(1962-12-14) 14 December 1962 (age 59) Hamburg, West Germany
Nationality	German
Alma mater	Munich University of Applied Sciences University of Bonn
Occupation	Art historian
Known for	Director of the British Museum
Predecessor	Neil MacGregor

Early life and education

Fischer was born on 14 December 1962 in Hamburg, West Germany.[1] His father came from Mecklenburg. As a child, Fischer glimpsed art galleries while visiting relatives farther to the south, in Dresden in then-separate East Germany.[2] He undertook postgraduate research on Hermann Prell,[3] for which he received a doctorate degree from the University of Bonn (Universität Bonn) in 1994.[4] He is fluent in German, French, Italian and English.[5]

Career

Fischer began his career at the Kunstmuseum Basel, an art museum in Basel, Switzerland. There, between 2001 and 2006, he was curator of 19th-century and modern art.[1] He became director of the Museum Folkwang in Essen in 2006 where he presided over a period of expansion.[6][7] In December 2011, he was appointed director of the Dresden State Art Collections (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden).[4] Subsequently, he succeeded Martin Roth, after Roth left to take charge at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.[8]

British Museum

On 25 September 2015, the trustees of the British Museum announced that Fischer would be the museum's next director.[9][10] He is the first non-British head of the museum since the Italian Sir Anthony Panizzi stood down in 1866.[11] He took up the appointment on 4 May 2016.[1][12]

In his role as director, he has supported the controversial possession of the Elgin Marbles, which were removed from the Parthenon in Athens by agents of Lord Elgin in the early 1800s.[13] Recent polls conducted showed that 37% of the British public supported the restoration of the marbles to the Greek government.[14] In January 2019, Fischer gave an interview in which he claimed the removal of the marbles was a "creative act", reaffirmed the British Museum's position of not loaning them to other museums, and stated that they were owned by the museum's trustees, rather than the Greek government.[15] The Greek Minister of Culture and Sports, Myrsini Zorba, claimed that Fischer's comments "ignore[d] the international debate and the Declarations of Unesco",[16] while George Vardas, the secretary of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures, described Fischer's views as "astonishing historical revisionism and arrogance".[15]

Selected works

• Fischer, Hartwig; Rainbird, Sean, eds. (2006). Kandinsky: The path to abstraction. London: Tate Publishing. ISBN 978-1854376770.
• Fischer, Hartwig (2013). Georg Baselitz: Hintergrundgeschichten (in German). München: Hirmer. ISBN 978-3777421667.
• Fischer, Hartwig (2014). Bernhard Maaz: Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister Dresden (in German). Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig. ISBN 978-3863356125.

References

Further reading

• Whitworth, Damian (21 April 2017). "The new boss of the British Museum — and his to-do list". The Times. Retrieved 21 April 2017.

На других языках

[de] Hartwig Fischer (Kunsthistoriker)