Expanding Art Museums
The Expanding Art Museums subproject of the Leuphana Innovation Community Art and Culture comprises a network of eight internationally renowned art museums. Its primary purpose is to facilitate networking among the participating museums and to conduct research on current organizational change in the museum sector.
We assume that organizational change must recognize and reflect the interplay between the “front stage” and “back stage” of art and cultural spaces: the negotiation and representation of social challenges and concerns (through art) are inextricably linked to the challenges of organizational change. The cooperative structure of the project is designed to systematically record, jointly reflect on, and help shape sustainable organizational processes and practices for the future of art museums.
Career paths in art and culture are diverse and rarely linear. As part of the Expanding Art Museums subproject of the Leuphana Innovation Community Art and Culture, Bettina Steinbrügge, director of the MUDAM (Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean) in Luxembourg, spoke with Dr. Maximilian Schellmann about her career path, her work as a museum director, and current developments and challenges in the organization, management, and orientation of international art museums.
Bettina Steinbrügge is a curator, lecturer, and art critic. From 2001 to 2007, she was director of the Halle für Kunst e. V. in Lüneburg. She later worked as a guest lecturer in Geneva and as a curator at the Kunsthalle in Mulhouse, Alsace, and was senior curator at 21er Haus, a branch of the Austrian Belvedere Gallery in Vienna. In January 2014, she became the first female director of the Hamburger Kunstverein, and in 2022 she took over as director of MUDAM.
Im Anschluss an das Gespräch stand sie im Rahmen eines “Culture & Organisation meets…” Studierenden der Leuphana für ein Gespräch zur Verfügung.
In the Expanding Art Museums subproject, the participating international art museums meet twice a year for focus group exchanges and workshops. In February 2025, representatives from MUDAM (Luxembourg), the Metropolitan Museum (US), Louisiana (Denmark), Kunstmuseum Basel (Switzerland), Zentrum Paul Klee (Switzerland), and Belvedere (Austria) gathered at Munich's Lenbachhaus to discuss sustainability in the organization of art museums.
In this interview , Dr. Maximilian Schellmann, one of the organizers and researchers in the Art and Culture Community, provides insights into the current challenges.
Artistic mapping is one way of addressing social challenges: a method that allows conversations, spatial arrangements, and objects to be embedded in drawings. Mappings are suitable for reflection or exchange in transdisciplinary projects. Whether scientific or artistic in nature, it is a promising tool for knowledge transfer. One example of the practical application of this method is the Leuphana Codex, a collection of drawings by Jazael Olguín Zapata that were created during a workshop organized by the Leuphana Innovation Community Art and Culture.