Dresden State Art Collections on the best way to former format

The Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) are well on the way to earlier format in terms of response and profitability. In view of the development so far, it is foreseeable that the originally expected number of 1.8 million visits will be exceeded, "we will end up with 2.1 million," said Administrative Director Dirk Burghardt on Tuesday. He therefore also expected generated revenues of 8.7 million euros instead of 7.5 million euros. In view of this development, the SKD are "very confident" to reach pre-Corona levels again in 2024 - with 2.6 million visits, however, 2019 was the previous peak year.

According to him, the share of international guests is also moving back towards the previously usual 50 percent, it is currently at 40 percent, thanks to a strong increase in guests from Poland and the Czech Republic. And also the Zuspruch of individual tourists from the inland and younger public holds. The opening of the palace in the evening, which has led to an increase of 25 percent in the number of visitors, has also had a positive impact. Only the Old Masters Picture Gallery, traditionally a magnet especially for guests from Russia and China, is still having a hard time.

Two new museums, artists' anniversaries, the Look to the East and the third Children's Biennale are to ensure even more resonance in 2024. Under the annual theme "Back to the Future," the focus is on shaping museums "in times of war and terror, of environmental crises and economic uncertainties," said SKD Director General Marion Ackermann. The "Archive of the Avant-Garde" as the domicile of Egidio Marzona's collection opens on May 5 with the show "Archive of Dreams." From the beginning of September, the puppet theater collection in the Kultur-Kraftwerk "for the first time really splendid to see", newly staged by the Berlin artist group Rimini Protokoll.

The highlights also include the large presentation on the 250th birthday of Caspar David Friedrich, whose major works were created in Dresden, which was the painter's center of life for over 40 years. "In doing so, we are putting forward the thesis that it was only here that he became a Romantic," Ackermann said. After Hamburg and Berlin, the show is part of a trilogy to mark the anniversary, which will be opened by the German president in December.

For the Children's Biennale, local and international artists are turning the Japanese Palais into "Planet Utopia," while the Kupferstich-Kabinett is showing recent works by Candida Höfer. Looking East brings the treasure of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague into dialogue with Edmund de Waal or modern and contemporary art from Poland to Dresden. The "Türckische Cammer" is to be reactivated. For the end of the Ottoman Empire 100 years ago, the composition of an opera is planned - about Fatma, one of the mistresses of the Saxon baroque prince Augustus the Strong.