8 April 2024
7pm CET | 6pm WET
The conversation will take place in English.
Recording of the conversation
Check all recordings in the series The Activist Museum: going deeper
In February 2024, we were informed, through a Museums Association article, that two German museums (Bundeskunsthalle – Federal Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn and the Kunstgewerbemuseum, SKD in Dresden) had welcomed Citizens’ Assemblies as a way of exploring how they can become more democratic and relevant institutions. The assemblies were organised by DemocracyNext, which believes that another democratic future is possible and that citizens’ assemblies should be central to a citizen-led democracy.
Each assembly comprised about 30 people who met over four days and were selected by lottery to be broadly representative of local communities. Participants in both assemblies were asked how the Bundeskunsthalle and the Kunstgewerbemuseum could “evolve to remain a relevant, welcoming, inclusive, and diverse public spaces that enable social dialogue on the most pressing issues of these rapidly changing times”. The report with recommendations for the Bundeskunsthalle was released in February and included inclusivity training for staff, simpler jargon-free language in exhibitions, interactive exhibitions to engage visitors’ minds and bodies, co-creation projects and a permanent Citizens’ Assembly to advise the museum. The report on SKD will be published on 16 May.
We invite you to join us for a debate with Thomas A. Geisler, director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum, and Vera Sacchetti, design critic and curator, who worked with DemocracyNext in the organisation of the assemblies.
References shared during the debate
Bionotes
Thomas Albert Geisler is the Director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) at the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD), Germany. He has curated many international exhibitions, e.g. for the Vienna Biennale, the London Design Biennale, and the Vitra Design Museum. Before his appointment in Dresden, he was the director of the Werkraum Bregenzerwald, where he was leading exhibitions and other initiatives, overlapping innovative craftsmanship, design and architecture. He was also the curator and head of the design collection at the MAK Vienna. As scholar and lecturer, Geisler played a pivotal role in establishing the Victor J. Papanek Foundation at the University for Applied Arts Vienna. He is a co-founder of Vienna Design Week and was the creative director of BIO 26: Common Knowledge, the 26th Biennial of Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He founded the DESIGN CAMPUS at Pillnitz Palace & Park, a curatorial driven research and development platform of the Kunstgewerbemuseum. In 2021, he invited Amelie Klein and Vera Sacchetti as Heads of the Summer School on Design & Democracy, which emerged into further research and the collaboration with the Bundeskunsthalle (Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany on the forthcoming exhibition For all! Re-Designing Democracy (30.05—13.10.2024). In preparation of the exhibition a Citizens’ Assembly (Gesellschafts-Forum) was established in parallel in Dresden and Bonn in 2023.
Vera Sacchetti (Lisbon, 1983) is a Basel-based design critic and curator. She specialises in contemporary design and architecture and serves in a variety of curatorial, research and editorial roles. Recently, she co-founded Fazer, a new design magazine in Portugal; co-initiated the Design and Democracy platform (2020–), which maps the intersections and overlaps between design and democratic systems and practices; and served as programme coordinator of the multidisciplinary research initiative Driving the Human: Seven Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal (2020-2023), which supports transdisciplinary research on sustainable futures. She was curator of the initial edition of architecture festival Archipelago: Architectures for the Multiverse (2021) and is one half of the curatorial initiative Foreign Legion. Sacchetti was associate curator of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, curatorial advisor for the BIO 50 Biennial of Design in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and, as part of editorial consultancy Superscript, headed the “Towards a New Avant-Garde” event series at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. She has recently edited Driving the Human: Seven Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal (Mousse Publishing, 2023); The Atelier Luma Approach (LUMA Arles, 2021); and Design As Learning: A School of Schools Reader (Valiz, 2018). Her writing has appeared in Disegno, Metropolis, and The Avery Review, among others. Sacchetti teaches at Design Academy Eindhoven, and in 2020 joined the Federal Design Commission of Switzerland.
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