Stella Rollig has been named the new artistic director of the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, world-renowned for its impressive collection of paintings by Gustav Klimt. Rollig is leaving her position as director of the Lentos museum in Linz to take up the new post. She’s succeeding outgoing director Agnes Husslein-Arco at the Belvedere, whose contract was not renewed for 2017 due to violations of internal codes of conduct and compliance standards.
The Austrian minister of culture, Thomas Drozda, announced the new appointment on Monday, together with that of Wolfgang Bergmann, manager of the Austrian paper Der Standard, as the museum’s administrative director.
Vienna’s Belvedere Museum has the largest collection of Gustav Klimt works in the world. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Back in February, and even before the financial scandal surrounding Husslein-Arco came to light, Austria established a new standard that splits the directorship of museums into two positions: artistic and administrative.
In an interview with Der Standard, Rollig said: “I consider art that surprises and perplexes me at first to be good art.”
In Lentos, she organized thematic exhibitions that increased visitor numbers at the museum, such as a show on the male nude in 2013, or the show “Mother of the Year” in 2015, on questions surrounding motherhood in modern society and the frustrating conundrums women face today.
“It is important that art history be continually reassessed,” she has said, an approach that could make for challenging exhibitions at the Belvedere.
Rollig and Bergmann will start on January 16, 2017.