Marion Ackermann, currently serving as general director of Dresden's state museums, was named the first female president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), the largest cultural employer in Germany.
Ackermann will take over the role of Hermann Parzinger, who is set to retire in June next year after serving as president for 17 years.
In a statement, Claudia Roth, the German culture minister, described Ackermann as an excellent museum manager, art expert, and strategist who is extremely well-connected nationally and internationally.
"One of the important factors in her appointment was her proven track record in successfully shaping transformation processes," Roth added. "I am sure that she will bring the comprehensive reform of the SPK to an excellent conclusion and take the foundation into a sustainable and successful future with extraordinary expertise, new ideas, and much energy."
The SPK, founded in 1957, supervised the world-class art collections of West Berlin. Combining the former East and West collections and changing the city's museum landscape with large-scale initiatives like the renovation of Museum Island have been its main priorities since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Ackermann went to Göttingen, Kassel, Vienna, and Munich to study art history, German literature, and history. She became the youngest director of an influential German museum when she took over the Stuttgart Art Museum in 2003.
She was a curator at Munich's Lennbauchhaus' Städtische Galerie from 1995 to 2003. With a PhD from the Georg-August University of Göttingen, she became an expert on twentieth-century and contemporary art specialist who has lectured at multiple universities.
Furthermore, she managed the art collections of North Rhine-Westphalia in Dusseldorf for seven years before taking over as general director of 15 museums in Dresden in 2016, overseeing 15 museums with more than 2 million visitors annually.
