Can one blame politicians for being
populist? The answer is yes. In 2001, Frankfurt’s then mayor Petra Roth, met a
fundraising assistant at the Guggenheim
in NY and brought him to Frankfurt. She first gave him the Schirn exhibition hall to manage, then made him Director General of
Frankfurt’s most important art museums, the Städel
and the Liebieghaus.
Hollein is a marketing man and ran his
museums accordingly. Big, crowd-pleasing exhibitions and constant publicity. Not
least, self-publicity. Now that he is leaving, Frankfurt should seriously
consider going back to the academic model of art museums. Museums should, after
all, be more than exhibition halls with fanfare.
This will not be an easy decision, as
publicity is a drug and Frankfurt got used to it. The mayor who will decide to opt for an academic, an art
historian, rather than a marketing man, will have to bear the accusation that “nobody mentions the Städel anymore”.
