Carsten Ahrens

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Carsten Ahrens (* 1961 in Buchholz in the Nordheide ) is a German art historian ; he was deputy director of the Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover, then director of the Mönchehaus Museum Goslar and the Weserburg Museum in Bremen .

biography

After graduating from high school in 1981, Ahrens studied art history, general and comparative literature and theater studies at the Free University of Berlin , as well as applied theater studies at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen . From 1986 he worked first as a research assistant, then as a curator and from 1994 to 2003 deputy director of the Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover . Ahrens married in 1990. In September 2004 he became director of the Mönchehaus Museum for Modern Art in Goslar .

Work in the Weserburg

Ahrens succeeded founding director Thomas Deecke (1991 to 2005) as director of the Weserburg on November 1, 2005.

Conceptually, Ahrens tended to show more private collections than to continue the development of his own collection, which had grown in the meantime. In connection with the abandonment of own holdings, it can be seen that in 2010, in a sensational campaign, he acquired two of the most important paintings ( Gerhard Richter's Sailors and Franz Gertsch's Luciano I ) from the museum's possession (donated by the Ludwig-Roselius-Museum Bremen to the Weserburg 2005) was auctioned off in order to renovate the museum building, which brought the house around 10 million euros, but also almost unanimously rejected the specialist public, who saw it as a taboo and problematic precedent. Ahrens attempted to counteract the house's financial problems, which have been acutely growing since 2010, with a concept of streamlining (including halving the exhibition area). At the same time, the criticism grew in the feature pages, the local press and the art scene, so that Ahrens resigned on June 10, 2013, despite the approval of his concept in the Board of Trustees.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.senatspressestelle.bremen.de
  2. ↑ www.weserburg.de
  3. ↑ Verena Emke: Bremen: Bremischer Minimalismus. In: zeit.de. January 31, 2013, accessed December 9, 2014 .
  4. ↑ www.radiobremen.de ( Memento from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ www.radiobremen.de ( Memento from June 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Ahrens, Carsten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art expert
DATE OF BIRTH 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Buchholz in the north heath